Design and Simulation of a Supervisory Control System for Hybrid Manufacturing

The research teams of Dr. Bill Hamel, Dr. Bradley Jared and Dr. Tony Schmitz were tasked by the Office of Naval Research to create a hybrid manufacturing process for a reduced scale model of a naval ship propeller. The base structure of the propeller is created using Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM), which is then scanned to compare created geometry to desired geometry. The propeller is then machined down to match the desired geometry. This process is iterated upon until the final product meets design tolerances. Due to the complex nature and numerous industrial machines used in the process, it is desirable to create a control system for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). This supervisory control system is necessary in order to ensure safe operations and logging of system data to document successful trials.

The goal of this thesis is to outline the design and simulation of a supervisory control system for this hybrid manufacturing cell. The design and implementation is focused on a simulation of the control of relevant boolean states of the system. This is accomplished through a Human Machine Interface (HMI) created in LabVIEW accompanied by appropriate data flow diagrams, models and communication specifications between machines. The creation of a digital twin of this hybrid manufacturing system was successful and useful in the implementation of physical components.