A compact and low cost solution to control your SMEMA based SMT electronic assembly equipment.
CFX-2591, Connected Factory Exchange, is the open industry data standard. CFX-2591 establishes the requirements for the omnidirectional exchange of information between manufacturing processes and associated host systems for assembly manufacturing. The standard applies to communication between all executable processes in the manufacture of printed board assemblies – automated, semiautomated and manual – and is applicable to related mechanical assembly and transactional processes.
The standard defines the communication protocol and content across all assembly production processes and is broken down into the CFX Structural Overview, Operational Modeling, CFX Topics and Dynamic Structure and CFX Messages.
Because this standard supports the CFX SDK (Software Development Kit), the industry standards body that manages it releases regular version updates to support industry when new equipment or message sets are added to the standard.
The adaptor allows CFX connected systems to interact with the raw SMEMA signals found on legacy equipment or using the MultiPlug Edge Computing Platform other data connections can be created to form solutions using building blocks of MultiPlug software extensions.
Such solutions may be to use SMEMA as an interlock to pause and check if a product should proceed down the production line to the next manufacturing equipment. To achieve this the Adaptor acts as a SMEMA middleman, not turning on either the Machine Ready SMEMA signal, or the Good/Bad Board SMEMA signal until the software check is made.
Common uses of the Adaptor would be remote SMEMA state monitoring for a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems and SMEMA Interlocking which may also be connected to barcode reading or a MES (Manufacturing Execution System) via a CFX connection.
Navigate to the lower half of this page to discover more details of uses for the Adaptor.
AKA the SMEMA CFX Adaptor
The Digital Economy has grown over the last 30 years and the people that work within it use the Web Browser has their native user interface. To employ their skills into the Manufacturing industry we must use the same technologies to talk the same language. While the Adaptor is a Headless device in normal operation, Setup and Monitoring is conducted by a Browser based user interface.
As a device with a defined purpose, the Adaptor will fulfill that purpose, but we now work within the Industry 4.0 era where shop floor technicals should be able to customise their solutions based on their changing needs. If that means the injection or extraction of data at given points, then a true Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) based product should give the option for change.
The Adaptor runs the MultiPlug Edge Computing Platform that allows additional functionality to be loaded by Software Extensions. MultiPlug.Ext.CFX is one such proprietary Extension but other Open Source Extensions can be loaded. New Extensions can be created using the .Net programming language.
The MultiPlug uses the Publish–Subscribe design pattern where events are mapped to subscriptions using a visual web browser editor making it fully flexible for changing needs.
You may want to simply pass the state of the SMEMA signals onto a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system to simply monitor the movement of a production line. In this situation the SMEMA signals will be relayed instantly from upline to downline equipment and events created in MultiPlug that can be pushed to CFX Connections or other higher systems using Network Sockets, REST Http, Serial or a bespoke MES interface. This solution would be seen as Read Only.
It may be useful to pause a production line due to an unrelated situation and rather than stop the equipment locally, a remote stop triggered by a remote user action or third party system. This is possible using a CFX connection which can control all SMEMA I/O as well as using the Web Browser based user interface.
The SMEMA interface can easily be repurposed for general Input and Output. A single lane SMEMA interface consists of 3 switch circuits (1A 30 VDC max) and 3 circuit detectors (open or closed). So could be easily used to trigger visible indicators such as beacons (Outputs) and connected to switched circuits (Inputs).
The state of these I/O can then be mapped within MultiPlug to trigger off other events such as a HTTP Post request to a third party system, Or use the MultiPlug REST API to toggle the state of the output I/O.