Included in Extrusia · Machine Connect
Connect your saws, welders, glass optimizer and label printers to the order that drives them.
Every number a machine needs is already in the order: the cut length, the welder program, the glass size, the label. Machine Connect hands each machine its part of it, in the format the machine already reads — so nobody types a cut list into a saw or walks a USB stick to the glass table.
What it connects today
Each was built against the real machines and their real files on a working window plant floor.
TigerStop saw positioners
The saw screen sends each cut straight to the TigerStop: the stop moves, the operator cuts and presses the pedal to record the piece. Pieces come in the controller's natural order — each profile longest first, identical lengths back to back — without changing which bars the plan uses.
Stürtz welders
The frame saw prints a welder label carrying the barcode the Stürtz operator station scans to load the right program and size. The welder gets its instructions from the same order the saw cut from.
Glass optimizers
Releasing a cart writes the optimizer's own order file into its folder — including the Perfect Score / Aculite format — named by the cart number on the floor, with tempered units kept off the table.
Zebra label printers
Tracking, welder, sash, screen, glass, shipping and NFRC certificate labels go straight to the Zebra at the right bench, in the printer's own label language. A bench prints only the rolls it is set up for.
Printers and hot folders
Batch packets and cut sheets print themselves when a cart is released, the morning brief prints on its own schedule, and any document can be dropped into a folder a machine or printer watches.
Scanners and benches
Ordinary barcode scanners at every bench, a kiosk screen per work center, and a station login that can only do that bench's job.
The shop-floor agent
Machines live on the plant network; Extrusia lives in the cloud. The bridge between them is a small agent installed on the PC beside each machine — including older Windows 7 shop PCs and Toughbooks — that runs as a Windows service, starts with the PC, and needs no window left open.
- Delivered once, never twice. Each label or file is claimed by one agent and acknowledged when it lands, so a label is never printed twice because two PCs asked at once.
- Retries that wait. A printer that is off or a share that is down is retried over twenty minutes rather than failed in seconds.
- Honest about uncertainty. "It did not go" is retried; "it may have gone" waits for a person, because a printer cannot un-print.
- Visible. The Machines screen shows every bench's agent — working, quiet, or stuck with work waiting — and a status page on the PC itself says so in plain words.
- Shares the saw's connection. The connection to the saw is released when it is idle, so another program on the same PC can still use it.
New machines, one at a time
Machine Connect is built on drivers that read and write each device's real file format, verified byte for byte against files the machine actually produced. When a plant brings a machine we have not connected before, we capture its real files first and build to them — never to a guess about the format.
Note: TigerStop, Stürtz, Zebra and Perfect Score are trademarks of their respective owners. Extrusia is not affiliated with or endorsed by them; the names describe the equipment Extrusia exchanges data with.
Machine Connect — common questions
Do our machines need an internet connection?
No. The Extrusia agent on a PC beside the machine talks to the cloud; the machine itself only sees files, a serial port or a printer on your local network, as it does today.
Will it run on our old shop PCs?
Yes. The agent is built to run on Windows 7 and later, including the rugged laptops common at saws.
Can we connect a machine you haven't listed?
Usually. We start from real files your machine produces or reads and build the driver to match them exactly. Tell us what you run when you request a demo.