One thing is clear: Competitiveness no longer depends only on competitive prices or reducing production times to a minimum, but on the company's Level of Digitalization. This is also the case in the Tool Grinding Industry.
The more digitally structured, the smoother the Flow of Information. The result: Tool manufacturers automatically increase their productivity and the clients are always up to date.
Digital Tool Twins are among such New Solutions. They bring an enormous increase in value in sales, planning and manufacturing.
What are Digital Tool Twins and what are they capable of?
Digital Tool Twins are Virtual Images of the cutting tool and as such Flexibly applicable in diverse virtual environments. The digital twin is nourished by information from development, optimization, remanufacturing and recycling. In its perfection, it thus maps all steps of the life cycle of the Cutting Tool.
But let’s start from the very beginning. The birth of a digital twin begins with the first drafts. The staff of the tool manufacturer sketches the cutting tool with a Software program. The first basic structures of the digital twin are set up. In the subsequent steps of the tool modeling, the employees gradually capture more data and add it to the digital tool twin.
One is never enough
A Digital Twin never comes alone. We can imagine this as a sort of “cloning process”: For each purpose, there is a specific copy of the digital twin and so we end up with several digital twins for Different Applications.
The digital “Production Twins”, for instance, ensure a smooth production. They contain information on material, coating and perhaps even entire NC Programs with grinding wheel data. The digital “Product Twin”, on the other hand, has the task of dipicting the tool in a way, that the customers can carry out the collision check of the tool and know how to use it in the best possible way. This means that the Technology Data, which are the characteristics of the tools, are also included.
The digital twins are then sent to the system, which knows directly what to do, thanks to the data they contain. How is the cutting tool manufactured or used, how is it recycled in an environmentally friendly way? - The digital tool twins provide all these instructions and thus create enormous Added Value. They are the Link between the Physical and Virtual world.
