机电专业英语 教学课件 作者 杨寿智 刘水平 Lesson 17.pptVIP

Lesson 17 Advantages of CNC Text Numerical control has been used in industry for over 40 years. Simply put, numerical control is a method of automatically operating a manufacturing machine based on a code of letters, numbers, and special characters. When Numerical Control is performed under computer supervision, it is called Computer Numerical Control (CNC). Computer is the control units of CNC machines. Today, computer numerical control (CNC) machines are found almost everywhere, from small job shops to Fortune 500 companies. CNC versus Manual Machines Computer numerical control is a complete departure from the conventional machine tool operation where an operator or machinist studies an engineering drawing or point and guides a cutting spindle based on the print information. The successful operation of a conventional machine tool depends in large part on the skill of the operator or machinist developed over many years of practice. With CNC, the drawings are studied and the information about the workpiece or part is converted to a series of appropriate code numbers by the part programmer. The code numbers represent every movement, path, or action the machine tool must take to properly machine the workpiece described in the engineering drawing. The complete series of codes necessary to produce a single workpiece on a machine tool is known as a part program. The movements and functions of the machine tool have now become the programmer’s responsibility, while the role of the operator is drastically changed. Thus the basic functioning of the machine does not rest with the person who is standing by monitoring the operation, but with the one who developed the part program in a coded form which guides and directs the workpiece machining. Machine tools cannot read numbers, however, the coded instructions are read by a program reader which is part of the overall Machine Control Unit often called the MCU. The function of the MCU is to act upon the coded instructions