Functionality available through Machine Connectivity
- Dominik Lindenberger
Connecting printers and post-processing machines to the MES via Machine Connectivity gives you access to a number of additional functionality.
Viewing the Online Status of Machines
On the Schedule tab, each connected machine displays a stack light and is listed with its current status. The status can be one of the following
Status | Description |
|---|---|
Idle | Machine is turned on. No jobs are running on the machine. |
Running | A job is currently being processed on the machine. |
Offline | The machine is not connected or is switched off. |
Stopped | The machine has stopped due to an error. |
The stack light is mapped individually to the internal statuses of each printer. You can reach out to support to find out the exact mapping if you are interested.
Machine events are notifications provided by the printers. They are displayed as notifications next to each printer. Events can be the detection of started and finished jobs or any warnings or errors provided by the printer.
Example display on the Schedule view
Ultimaker S5 - The machine is turned on but in status Idle and showing a green stack light. There are 6 notifications.
Fortus900 - The machine is currently turned off or not connected. There are 240 notifications.
Ultimaker 3 - This machine is not configured via Machine Connectivity.
In case of a crash of the Aggregtor - the software the receives machine events - we mark all machines as offline.
Smarter Job Management
Detecting started jobs
When a job is created manually in the MES and is scheduled, i.e. the job has a start and end time, then the MES can automatically detect through Machine Connectivity if that job is started on the connected machine.
The following algorithm matches a scheduled job with a job that is detected on a connected machine:
A scheduled job is matched with a detected job if
the detected job started within the start and end time of the scheduled job
or if the detected job started max 2h before the start time of the scheduled job
Creating jobs automatically
When a job is detected via Machine Connectivity that cannot be matched with any scheduled job, or if no scheduled job exists, then a new job will be created automatically in the MES with the data provided by the machine.
Automatic update of job times
When a job is detected via Machine Connectivity, the following times are set and updated automatically in the MES
Start time
When an existing MES job is matched with a detected job, then the start time of the job in the MES is set to the actual start time.End time
When a connected machine sends the job finished signal, then the end time of the job in the MES is set accordingly.Estimated duration
Value is adjusted throughout the printing time when the printer sends updated duration estimates.