Direct Machining Operation Performed by Autonomous NC Machine Tool Controlled by Digital Copy Milling Concept

Abstract

In order to shorten production lead-time, it is needed to eliminate time and efforts for process planning after product design. However, as far as a conventional NC machine tool is utilized, a reliable NC part program has to be prepared to achieve high cutting productivity and accuracy. It is a time consumed operation according to the fact that all cutting parameters are predetermined and coded as NC programs before the cutting operation to maintain the stable cutting operation and to avoid the cutting trouble for the whole cutting operation. The digital copy milling system which generates tool paths in real time has been developed to solve the problem mentioned above. In this study, a commercial process planning software is customized to integrate with the digital copy milling system for realizing an autonomous NC machine tool. The cutting operation performed by the digital copy milling system integrated with the commercial process planning software is compared to a conventional cutting operation performed by manual process planning using CAM software. The direct machining operation, which does not require any effort to prepare an NC part program, is performed successfully using a conventional NC machine tool associated with the digital copy milling system.