Manual CNC programming system and technique to use computer aided design systems to determine cutter location information
OwnerDouglas Sullivaninventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A manual computer numerical control (CNC) programming method and system (which may be embodied in whole or part in an article of manufacture or apparatus) in which coordinates may be manually entered into a text editor into a file format known as the coordinate work sheet (CWS) including verification, modification and conversion of the CWS to G-Code, the coordinate work sheet format being a comma delimited ASCII text file, and further including cutter on/off commands and using computer aided design (CAD) data to generate the coordinate work sheet (CWS).
Claims20
A computer based programming method for producing a section of a numerical control program used to control a machine tool upon either the manual or automatic creation of an appropriately formatted coordinate work sheet file, which in addition to producing said section of the numerical control program, may also be used to graphically verify, and modify said coordinate worksheet file.
An apparatus for generating commands for controlling a computer numerical control machine to fabricate an object from a workpiece, said apparatus comprising means for executing the following method for producing a section, including the cutter coordinate, cutter motion, and cutter on/off sections, of a numerical control program to control a machine tool controller upon the manual or automatic creation of an appropriately formatted coordinate work sheet file;
- producing said section of the numerical control program and graphically verifying, and modifying said coordinate worksheet file to be converted to G-Code format to be used to produce a numerical control program.
An article of manufacture for generating commands for controlling a computer numerical control machine to fabricate an object from a workpiece, said article of manufacture comprising a computer readable medium holding computer executable instructions for performing a method for producing a section of a numerical control program used to control a machine tool upon either the manual or automatic creation of an appropriately formatted coordinate work sheet file, which in addition to producing said section of the numerical control program, may also be used to graphically verify, and modify said coordinate worksheet file;
- producing an effective representation of a part to be machined may be drawn within a CAD system and an effective representation of the tool paths may also be drawn within a CAD system, and, by using the CAD to create points and lines in unique layers and in the sequence required can be used to develop the coordinate work sheet automatically, where the appropriately formatted coordinate work sheet file is a comma delimited ASCII text file that will include lines of coordinate data that takes on the general appearance as follows:
- RPD,T1,##.####,##.####
- LNR,T1,##.####,##.####
- CW,T1,##.####,##.####,##.####,##.####
- CCW,T1,##.####,##.####,##.####,##.####
- where “RPD”, “LNR”, “CW”, and “CCW” correspond to Rapid, Linear, Clockwise, and Counterclockwise motion commands respectively, “T1” is a generic programming prompt in the second column, and “##.####” corresponds to the absolute cutter coordinates of a machining operation relative to program zero, and converting the manually or automatically generated coordinate work sheet file to the G-Code format requirements of the machine tool controllers.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.