To cut solid metal and other hard materials like wood and hard plastics a machine tool or woodworking machine needs cutting tools. These cutting tools are typically ground from cylindrical solid carbide or high-speed steel blanks. To cut sheet metal on the other hand punching or shearing tools are used. This specification deals with the manufacturing process of cylindrical cutting tools like end mills, drills, reamers, and thread cutters as well in the future with grinding wheels and wheelsets used to manufacture these cutting tools and the following measurement process. It implicitly also allows the use for tool remanufacturing, where expensive tools are measured and then reground to refurbish the geometrical properties.

The interface is to be used for tool grinding machines, laser tool manufacturing, erosion machines, measuring machines and higher-level IT systems. This specification reuses and inherits many type definitions from other companion specifications, as many use cases are common for other grinding and measuring machines as well as using the standardized job management and other feature from the OPC UA for Machinery companion specification.

Therefore, we are mainly focusing on the unique use cases describe in 5 and the defined TypeDefinitions are instance declaration for the use in this sector.

The typical workflow in the tool manufacturing process is the following.

Starting with the design and definition of a cutting tool in a CAD/CAM tool chain, the geometrical properties are defined as well as the necessary NC tool path calculation happens. Furthermore, the grinding wheel geometry and needed grinding wheelset definition is done. All these prepared definitions are then stored in the standardized format defined by specification VDMA 34189. Together with the production plan, how many and when these are to be produced, it is prepared and send to the tool manufacturing machine via the OPC UA interface defined by this companion specification.

After production of the first cutting tool or workpiece, the nominal geometry is transferred to the measuring machine with the workpiece for measuring. The workpiece is then measured, and the actual geometry is stored in the same format or file defined above. The transfer of the file and the job happens also by this standardized interface. This result file is then available for the higher-level IT system for quality assurance and control as well as for the manufacturing machine to calculate grinding path corrections to ensure the required geometry.

Possible system architectures how the OPC UA application might be deployed are described in Annex B.