Video: Mitutoyo MeasurLink SPC Q&A - Working with Data Collection Systems

Hi, I'm Drew Klaber with Mitutoyo America Corporation, I'm here with Jeremy Banks. Jeremy is our National Data Management Sales Specialist. Today, we're doing a little MeasurLink Q&A session.

Drew: So, Jeremy, one of the questions I get frequently from customers is in regards to DEQ sources—different kinds that are available, wired, wireless, grabbing data from other stations, even at the point of what does DAQ stand for?

Jeremy: Well, Drew that's a great question. When it comes to DAQ sources, it basically breaks down into a few different types: there's going to be be USB, serial, text, and DDE.

Drew: Okay.

Jeremy: Okay, so to start out simply, let's take a look at this USB input tool hooked up to this digimatic caliper.

Drew: So this is all one piece, so you go directly from the tool—there's no interface box required for this?

Jeremy: No. It's a one-piece cable, it's digimatic connection on one end and it's USB on the other. So you just plug it into your gauge, making sure that you pick the right port type, and then you plug this into a USB port on your computer.

Drew: Okay, so what about drivers—any special software or anything?

Jeremy: Nope, it's plug-and-play. Just plug it right in and you’re ready to collect data. Now as far as MeasurLink is concerned, this is a USB interface, so all we do is pick that in the device settings, and I can show you in the software a little bit later, and all you do is plug it in and collect data.

Drew: Very good. What if a customer has multiple data sources? This seems like it would be great for a single tool like we have here, maybe two or three tools, but if I have eight or ten tools I might run out of USB ports pretty quickly.

Jeremy: Right. So if you're just doing one or two, this is a great device. But if you’re doing multiple inputs then we have a multiplexer. So a multiplexer is simply a multiple input device. Same connection—digimatic, but on the other end we're going to use a 10 pin connection to our multiplexer.

Drew: So the cable is actually a little different, how it plugs into the gauge is still the same, correct?

Jeremy: Right.

Drew: But I'm noticing this is not the USB connection like the other cable.

Jeremy: Right, this is a D-type cable. And actually, if you look, this is not a connection that you're going to see on a regular computer. So what you do is you plug this into your multiplexer and then on the other end of the MiG is a standard serial port. The other end of the serial port is going to plug into your computer. On older, larger, stand-alone computers you're going to have an RS-232 port. On this end it's 25-pin, on the computer side it's 9-pin. Now, on your newer computers, they're not going to have a serial port, so we have a 25-pin /  9-pin adapter that's going to be USB on the other end.

Drew: Now is this any proprietary information on that or can you teach MeasurLink to pull data from this or any other RS-232 device?

Jeremy: So we could use any third party device, it can be an older-style device that only has serial output or it could be a modern device that you want to use the serial commands, maybe you want bi-directional communication, so you want to use a serial connection. Now, inside of the MeasurLink software it's a little more complicated, you're not just going to say that it's a USB gauge sending data you're actually going to set what the parity the baud rate—all of those serial settings inside of our software, which I'll show you in a couple minutes. And you're also going to set the string that the data format is going to be in, and this could be different for a variety of gauges. So there's a utility in the measuring software that allows you to set all this. So all you really need is a manual and an example data string and you're in business.

Drew: Okay, so if I have a granite setup like this and multiple gauges, I could go into a MiG box such as this. What if I have several gauges and I'm concerned about cables getting intertwined and things of that nature?

Jeremy: So of course what the multiplexer everything is going to be wired. Now we do have the Mitutoyo U-Wave system. It's three main components: it's a receiver, it's a transmitter, and then a little pigtail cable that connects to the gauge. Now, it's the same port that all of the other connection types we’re using. So I could use with this gauge a USB input to direct or a multiplexer with an SPC cable, or I could use U-Wave, the connection is all the same.

Drew: How many transmitters can I hook up to a single receiver?

Jeremy: Well, this one receiver will support 100 transmitters and Windows will support 16 receivers, so yes you can actually have a system with 1600 devices in use at once. Most people don't normally do that, they'll keep it down to about 10 or 15 gauges in the system, but you have the ability to expand if you need to.

Drew: Very good. So this is all great if we're pulling data from actual physical measuring tools, right here I have a micrometer, here an indicator, here a caliper, but not every tool in the lab it has a digimatic output port or maybe has a number on it. Maybe it's coming from another software, maybe it's a CMM software or vision software. Do we still have the ability to pull that data in to MeasurLink so all the data is in one place?

Jeremy: Absolutely. If it's a Mitutoyo product, if it's a standard Mitutoyo software, then we can use a DDE connection and a DDE connection is a direct connection from the in COSMOS, the QV pack for trace pack software directly to MeasurLink.

Drew: So they automatically handshake together.

Jeremy: Absolutely. It takes minimal setup. Basically you just say I'm sending data to MeasurLink on this tolerance and you're off and running.

Drew: Okay, now, what if somebody's made a bad decision and has a non-Mitutoyo CMM, for example?

Jeremy: Unfortunately, that happens. Sometimes people are using devices that we don't make like tensile testers or something like that, or maybe digital scales or spectrometer. So most measuring devices have a way to digitally output the data. So now I'll put a text file or an output file an ASCII file, this file will have the data in a repeatable format. So we have a function called import templates and what we can do is set up a template inside of the MeasurLink software that would then parse the data coming through the text file. So every time the data is output from the gauge, we’ll import it in the MeasurLink.

Drew: So how does that work since no two machines will output the same format of file?

Jeremy: Well there's a utility inside of MeasurLink that allows us to build the import template, so you can build as many templates as you need. Generally speaking though, a certain software will output the same every time, you may have more features or a different part number but the format's the same. So your tensile tester can output all the same format even if you have a hundred different part numbers but your digital scale might output a different format, but it's going to be the same for all 100 part numbers. So you'd build two templates, one for the tester one for the scale.

Drew: Well Jeremy thank you for your time, this has been a great overview of all these individual products. If I want to learn more on specific ways of pulling data in, what can I do?

Jeremy: Well, in the future, we're going to make these Tool Tip videos and we're going to share these out on YouTube and any other video service and I'm going to make individual Tool Tip videos for collecting data from USB devices, from serial devices, and from virtual comports.

Drew: Great, so anyway that wants to know more can just go to YouTube and search up the Mitutoyo America Channel and find it from there.

Jeremy: Absolutely.

Drew: Very good. Well thank you for your time today, I sure do appreciate it, and thank you for your time. If you have any other questions, please feel free to find more videos on our YouTube channel or visit us online at www.Mitutoyo.com.