we recently had to clean a vacuum pump for one of our CNC machines, and while checking the user manual, I noticed it specifies a recommended number of operating hours after which the pump should be cleaned and inspected.
That got me thinking, since FabMan already tracks a machine’s idle and active states, what if it allowed to set a maintenance interval based on total busy hours? Once the machine reaches the specified time, the system could have a new activity in the Activity log for maintenance.
I’m sure this could also be done externally through an integration.
This idea stuck in my head, and I´ve come up with more ideas for this:
Users sometimes report that they have multiple sets of parameters for laser cutters based on how long the lens hasn´t been cleaned. This could give them the current state.
There could be more maintenance intervals for each machine (e.g., on 3D printers, nozzle wear, belt tension, first layer calibration, etc., could be checked after x number of busy hours).
Really cool would be having a input, which would track expenses (e.g. new 3D printing nozzle, new filter for laser cutter, etc.). Every maintanance task could have a cost asociated with it.
Did someone build something like that as an integration?
Hey @Jan_Vejtasa! Yes, this is something we wanted to add for a very long time. Adding (multiple) maintenance intervals to every machine seems like a good idea.
The biggest question is what kind of settings would make sense for most machines. I would guess each service interval can be defined as one of:
You could totally do this externally (and I think Fab Lab Brno had already built a custom solution for that a long time ago, iirc), but we should offer at least a basic version of this internally.