COMPUTER NUMERICAL CONTROL MACHINES

INTRODUCTION

Today, computer numerical control (CNC) machines are found almost everywhere, from small job shops in rural communities to many companies in large urban areas. Truly, there is hardly a facet of manufacturing that is not in some way touched by what these innovative machine tools can do. Everyone involved in the manufacturing environment should be well aware of what is possible with these sophisticated machine tools. The design engineer, for example, must possess enough knowledge of CNC to perfect dimensioning and tolerance techniques for work pieces to be machined on CNC machines. The tool engineer must understand CNC in order to design fixtures and cutting tools for use with CNC machines. Quality control people should understand the CNC machine tools used within their company in order to plan quality control and statistical process control correctly. Production control personnel should be abreast of their company's CNC technology in order to make realistic production schedules. Managers, foremen, and team leaders should understand CNC well enough to communicate intelligently with fellow workers. And, it goes without saying that CNC programmers, setup people, operators, and others working directly with the CNC equipment must have an extremely good understanding of CNC machines. In this chapter, I will explore the basics of CNC machine that I gain in the training.

Basic Hardware Components

• Panel Control Unit (PCU)

• Keyboard (KB)

• Machine Control Panel (MCP)

• Profibus cable 72/48 (PP 72/48; 72 digital inputs,48 digital outputs)

• Drive Module

Basic Software Components

• System software on the permanent flash memory on the PCU

a) Boot software

b) HMI (Human Machine Interface) software

c) NCK (Numerical Control Kernel) software

d) PLC (Programmable Logic Control) software

• Toolbox software