Machinery Motion Primitive

A method for motion programming of a machine tool, said method comprising:

• providing a programming language including a set of motion primitives, where each motion primitive defines a cutting step or an air cut step from a first point to a second point with position, velocity and acceleration boundary conditions at the first and second points, where the motion primitives includes a Drill motion primitive defining a hole drilling step in an axial direction into a workpiece, a Retreat motion primitive defining a tool extraction from a hole in the axial direction, an Aircut-Up motion primitive defining an air cut tool motion in the axial direction away from the workpiece, an Aircut-XY motion primitive defining an air cut tool motion in a lateral direction normal to the axial direction, and an Aircut-Down motion primitive defining an air cut tool motion in the axial direction toward the workpiece;
• reading a machining program written in the programming language, by a software application running on a computing device, where the machining program includes two or more of the motion primitives in sequence describing a machining operation including at least one air cut step and one cutting step, and the first point of each motion primitive in the machining program has boundary conditions matching the second point of a preceding motion primitive;
• computing a motion plan defining a motion of a tool according to the machining program, by the software application, where the motion plan includes at least one non-static boundary condition between steps, and a velocity profile of each step and values of any variable boundary conditions are calculated using an iterative computation to yield a minimum total time for the motion plan;
• and
• using the motion plan by the machine tool to perform the machining operation.

A machine tool motion programming system, said system comprising:

• a computing device having a processor and memory, said computing device executing a software application configured for;
• reading a machining program written in a programming language including a set of motion primitives, where each motion primitive defines a cutting step or an air cut step from a first point to a second point with position, velocity and acceleration boundary conditions at the first and second points,
• where the machining program includes two or more of the motion primitives in sequence describing a machining operation including at least one air cut step and one cutting step, and the first point of each motion primitive in the machining program has boundary conditions matching the second point of a preceding motion primitive;
• and
• computing a motion plan defining a motion of a tool according to the machining program, where the motion plan includes at least one non-static boundary condition between steps, and a velocity profile of each step and values of any variable boundary conditions are calculated using an iterative computation to yield a minimum total time for the motion plan;
• providing the motion plan to a machine tool to perform the machining operation.