Gear Technology Magazine
www.geartechnology.com/articles/26488

MTConnect Institute Releases Latest Standard

January 3, 2020

The MTConnect Institute, standard development organization for MTConnect, announces the release of Version 1.5.0 of the MTConnect standard, the world’s only free, open semantic vocabulary for discrete manufacturing. This version includes: 

New data items and information models for additive manufacturing including material system, deposition system, volumetric units, wait states

New data items for robotic machine tending including part detect

Expanded data items for machine tools including variables, program nesting level, program source, streaming variables, native units

Expanded data items for cutting tools including tool offset variable and tool group

New data items and information models for complex manufacturing systems including relationships and new event type references by device ID

Bug fixes and editorial corrections

The standard is produced and maintained by volunteers from industry via the MTConnect Institute Standards Committee and its working groups. A free, open-source, community-maintained MTConnect agent written in C++ is available on GitHub and includes version 1.5 updates. In addition to new data items, Version 1.5 saw the foundation laid for publishing a SysML model with future releases. That model is a work-in-progress and also available on GitHub.