Benefits of Smart Laser Marking Control Board

Smart devices or devices connected to the Internet, such as smartphones, wireless scanners that send images to the cloud, and fitness tracking devices, can make up a significant proportion. At work, you may have industrial equipment connected to the "Industrial Internet of Things" that sends measurements, performance reports, and alerts to managers and technicians. Some of these devices communicate with other devices to automate any number of tasks. Add the smart laser marking control board to the list.

What is a smart laser marking control board?

A smart laser marking control board is a hardware device that can connect to a network and communicate with other devices such as programmable logic controllers. These control boards are similar to the traditional motherboards found on PCs. The control board also makes the marking system much smarter.

For example, an article in Industrial Lasers explains that it is not uncommon for manufacturers to use dedicated terminals to control each laser device (Source: Industrial Lasers, Laser Marking participates in the Industrial Internet of Things). increase). In such an arrangement, changes to the laser marking job must be made on each dedicated terminal. This is not as easy as clicking a few buttons. You need to download and start the job, which can be very tedious and time-consuming.

If you think this is very inefficient, you are right. With the smart laser marking control board in place, only one programmable logic controller is used to control the entire network of connected and properly equipped laser devices.

This innovation is likely to change laser markings and make it much more efficient to move forward. Just as a document can be printed to a network printer, factory workers can send laser jobs to marking devices without having to configure workstations for each device individually.

The control board allows you to download, select, and send marking jobs to your marking device, but not just in hardware. Information can be exchanged through software, remote APIs, and Ethernet IP communication.

Benefits of smart laser marking control board

The technology is complex, but the benefits are simple.

Individual computers do not have to manage each marking device. This dramatically simplifies marking, improves efficiency, and reduces energy consumption and cost.

Each smart control board simply connects to the network and becomes part of the Industrial Internet of Things. These control boards replace individual PCs and allow remote control of marking devices.

Less downtime associated with changing Laser marking on metal. Suppose you have 10 marking devices that process laser jobs and it takes an average of 10 minutes to download and start a new job. When you change a job, you need to download the new job 10 times to 10 different computers and perform the same start procedure on each computer. With a fictitious 10-minute time frame, more than an hour and a half is spent. The more devices you have, the more time you lose.