2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The manufacturing sector is facing a significant wave of retirements in the upcoming years. This will result in a loss of mentoring, guidance and training coming from seasoned machinists and operators to younger workers. Digital shadows can be used to collect data from experts to create a knowledge base that can be used to create an intelligent assistant. Experts monitor machining operations through their senses: they listen to chatter or feel the vibrations of a machine. Depending on what they infer from them, they tune key parameters to optimize the performance of an operation. This work is focused on collecting vibration data from a CNC mill using accelerometers and microphones. These accelerometers are strategically positioned on the base of the mill, where the acceleration is expected to be zero in all directions, and on the spindle, where the acceleration is expected to be zero in the X and Y directions. The vibrations are given by the magnitude of deviation from their expected values. These accelerations are then processed using an FFT to get the frequencies of the different magnitudes of vibrations at each point. This data is then sent via UDP to a digital shadow of the CNC mill developed on an Apple Vision Pro. The results of this work are being used to create an intelligent work augmentation system for manufacturing. By creating an immersive manufacturing space with real time feedback, a new generation of young machinists can be trained quickly in the wake of the loss of these professional machinists.