US 4,467,432 AGranted

Tracer control system

AssigneeFujitsu Fanuc Limited

InventorsRyoji Imazeki, Etsuo Yamazaki

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Abstract

The direction of pick feed is determined by a feed-direction signal produced based on the result of decision by a phase decision circuit and the direction of pick feed inputted from an input unit, and the pick feed is effected by a contour trace. In the case of tracing a hemispherical model, the pick feed can be achieved in a plane parallel to the X-Y plane. The feed-direction signal indicates whether the direction of tangential velocity is to be +90.degree. or -90.degree. with respect to the normal direction. A velocity arithmetic circuit inverts the polarity of its output, a tangential-direction velocity signal, depending on the binary value of the feed-direction signal. Motors are driven by the outputs from amplifiers selected by a gate circuit, by which, in the case of tracing the hemispherical model, the pick feed plane is made to correspond to that in the case of a contour trace, wherein the pick feed can be effected in a plane parallel to the X-Y plane.

Claims2

Dependent claims

A tracer control system in which:

a trace direction and a trace velocity are calculated, based on displacement signals from a tracer head tracing a model surface over a trace region;
the tracer head performs tracing along a selected feed axis in each of a plurality of selected planes parallel to a selected one of the X-Z and Y-Z planes defined by respective X, Y and Z feed axes of said tracer control system;
each time the tracer head has reached a boundary of the trace region, a pick feed is carried out along a respective selected one of said feed axes;
and, upon completion of the pick feed, the tracer head proceeds to tracing along the respective selected feed axis in the subsequent one of said planes;
said system comprising
an input unit for inputting feed data, including data on the direction of the pick feed along the respective selected feed axis,
a phase decision circuit for deciding the polarity of a respective one of said displacement signals from said tracer head corresponding to the selected feed axis along which said tracing is occurring, and
a sequence controller for producing a feed-direction signal for controlling the pick feed, based on the result of the decision by the phase decision circuit and said data on the direction of the pick feed inputted from the input unit,
wherein during each said pick feed, the tracer head performs tracing in a plane parallel to the X-Y plane, with the trace direction being determined from said feed-direction signal and the output of said phase decision circuit.

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Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.