Frequently Asked Questions about AMP…

How does AMP connect to machines?

AMP is built around an open-source Internet protocol called MQTT, which is a lightweight “publish/subscribe” method of transporting data payloads at relatively high frequency - typically every second - from a source device, such as a machine PLC control program, a press accessory or a sensor device connected to a gateway. A way of thinking about is that MQTT is to industrial IoT (the Internet of Things) what HTML/CSS are to websites.

MQTT stands for “Message Queuing and Telemetry Transport” and is governed by the OASIS Open Foundation, whose members include a who’s-who of some of the biggest players in technology, such as Microsoft, IBM and many others.

MQTT is a very easy and secure way to move data. And “data telemetry” - the individual data points you may be interested in capturing in real time, such as “speed”, “status”, “total count”, “power”, “defect rate”, as well as context data such as “job”, “operator”, “material type”, etc. - are easy to define in an MQTT message format. AMP provides a very flexible way to “ingest” MQTT messages, and allows for you to easily expand the capture of telemetry as your needs for data grow.

More and more equipment and software supplied to the printing, packaging and converting industry is capable of publishing MQTT messages out-of-the-box for open connectivity to AMP and other IoT platforms. If your machine maker or software provider hasn’t adopted MQTT yet, it is relatively trivial to do so with the cooperation of your machine OEM or software provider. To the extent that a machine cannot easily publish to MQTT, there are other ways to go about the data capture process, including via drop-in sensors. The team at AMP is available to assist with this.

Can AMP connect to a “dumb” machine?

While newer machines typically offer a plethora of data to capture, process and visualize within AMP, older machines may not. This is especially true when you consider slitters, rewinders, offline die-cutters, older presses, etc. The good news is there are relatively easy ways to pull data from these machines through use of “drop in” IoT sensors.

For a moving web, wheel-based or laser speed encoders are the easiest example. They can provide basic data such as machine speed, which can provide a good overall view of machine productivity.

For machines that have inspection cameras mounted, these auxiliary systems from most vendors can easily publish additional data into AMP through open APIs, which can interact with MQTT.

For machines that do not have inspection cameras, but for which there could be a value for image data capture, there are some relatively affordable drop in “area inspection” cameras that can measure more than just speed, and can include things such as bar-code interpretation and serial number tracking.

Additionally, AMP can be set up with a machine-side tablet or touch-screen to allow operators to capture context data, such as Job Number, Machine Status, Machine Stop Reason, Waste, etc.

The AMP Team offers ready-to-go sensors for a variety of data collection scenarios that are easy to install and are pre-connected to AMP to get you going quickly.

How much data can AMP collect?

AMP was architected as an industrial IoT (Internet of Things) platform to scale to 10’s of thousands of connected devices, each providing data payloads every second. And AMP has very robust tools for managing data, and making sense of large amounts of it quickly. This is primarily what differentiates AMP from many of the “auto count” systems that exist in various parts of the manufacturing world, and that have become popular in some of the larger industrial segments.

How does the AMP Cure Sensor work?

The AMP hardware team (in cooperation with partner companies) has been been developing a set of pre-connected “drop in” devices that can provide a wealth of live quality data around your inline process, where today there may be very little if none. UV curing is a good example, and we showcased a new sensing device at Labelexpo Americas 2022 that can measure data from the UV curing reaction in realtime for quality control.

The converting industry relies heavily on UV and LED UV curing systems for inks, coatings and varnishes, yet most of today’s quality control occurs offline, and it is very hard if not impossible to detect a cure quality failure while the press is running. Under or over-cured labels quickly can lead to waste or failed product downstream with customers, and is one of the largest sources of pain in the label converting space.

The AMP Cure Sensor device, known as LiveSense Cure, is already helping label converters measure cure quality on press, and can provide conformity reports for downstream customers and brands who care about it. The device relies on 6 integrated sensors that measure various aspects of the curing process, and can build a reference data range of “good cure” to keep this important variable in line.

The AMP LiveSense Cure Sensor for inline UV cure quality monitoring was developed in partnership with AMS Spectral UV

Do you have a sensor that can measure COF inline?

We’ve heard this request from quite a few people who convert labels and packaging. Our LiveSense Cure device has some ability to correlate the level of COF (Coefficient of Friction) through several of its integrated sensors. However, the AMP team is now looking into a dedicated “drop in” device that can detect slip as a function of press speed. If you’re interested in learning more about it, or beta testing such a device with us, please reach out and give us a call or email.

What other types of AMP sensors are available?

There are virtually an unlimited number of sensors that can be connected to your machines with AMP. In addition to cure data sensing, we offer pre-AMP’d “drop in” devices that can detect gloss, substrate temperature, static charge, VOCs, and more.

For chemistry, such as inks and coatings, our team can provide devices that detect pH conductivity, and viscosity, for example. For more advanced detection, our team can assist you with cameras that can detect and interpret barcodes and other variable data.

The AMP team can help you deploy off-the-shelf IoT sensors that you provide, or we can offer sensor devices developed by our hardware team and pre-AMP’d sensors that have been developed in partnership with others.

Can AMP be used to track productivity and OEE on the plant floor?

Yes, AMP’s customizable dashboards can be used to create and display virtually any type of data collected, from basic productivity information to OEE targets, etc. Because AMP is web native, any display monitor or TV can be used to display AMP data as long as it’s connected to a PC or Mac with a supported browser (e.g. Google Chrome). This capability allows you to set up production display monitors around your shop or plant floor that can be machine/device specific, or that can aggregate and display information across machines. The same information is available for display from any web-enabled device, such as a tablet or phone.

AMP can be used to quickly set up productivity targets and tracking by machine and can help make this information visible to anyone in the plant floor - for example, OEE, availability, downtime, performance, quality, waste, etc. The same information is available to anyone with a login ID to AMP from any web enabled device.

AMP’s dashboard widgets can be both customized by user/role and they can be set up as defaults for the machine. AMP’s dashboards display data live in realtime (usually within a few milliseconds after it’s been transmitted) and can also display historical data.