A Campus Prototype of Interactive Digital Twin in Cyber Manufacturing

Abstract

Smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 are bringing disruptive changes to the manufacturing sector. Smart manufacturing increases productivity, creates safer conditions for workers, and simplifies product customization, all while decreasing business expenses [2]. To this end, we have created a flexible three-component architecture for remote machine management, using it to build a digital twin prototype of a Creality Ender-3 Pro 3D printer located on the University at Buffalo campus. This twin provides users with the ability to monitor and control the machine from anywhere in the world through a web interface. Our system improves upon existing technologies, such as Octoprint [1], through the addition of twin views. It also relies upon cheaper components, using the Arduino and ESP32 rather than the Raspberry Pi. Finally, existing technologies tend to focus on one specific type of machine. In contrast, our framework is flexible, capable of supporting many different machines.