3YOURMIND joins VDMA OPC UA Joint Working Group towards standardisation
3YOURMIND, Berlin, Germany, has announced its membership to the Joint Working Group (JWG) between VDMA and Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA). This sees 3YOURMIND join 180 companies operating in Additive Manufacturing which have gathered to help standardise industry practices.
The collaboration between VDMA and OPC UA JWG brings together experts across the entire Additive Manufacturing value chain, including machine manufacturing, materials, pre-and post-processing, and software specialists.
The goal of the OPC UA is to create a standardised, open framework that will enable interoperability based on mechanical engineering requirements, including open-source access, enhanced security, scalability, semantic machine description, and transport mechanisms and protocols.
“For the user, an open platform means bringing together different machines that can be connected to available production locations along the process chain – and that’s where 3YOURMIND is involved,” stated Ranier Gerhardt, advisor to the Additive Manufacturing working group at VDMA.
To help achieve this framework, the OPC UA JWG Companion Specifications initiative will leverage 3YOURMIND’s experience as an Additive Manufacturing workflow automation solution to populate data requirement profiles to help solidify standard data capture practices industry-wide.
“Automated and scalable AM productions require a uniform communication interface between machines and software,” added Karl Patrick Möller, 3YOURMIND’s lead machine connectivity technician and editor of the JWG. “In the Joint Working Group, we are developing this standard to ensure clear data collection, streamlined communication channels, and control of different machine types.”
