Development Of Auto-programming System For CNC Pipe-cutting Machine

The CNC pipe-cutting machine is developing more and more perfect, and has become the main method of pipe cutting. Currently the main programming method of the CNC pipe-cutting machine is calculating by hand, and it requires the computation of some parameters. This method is inefficient and troublesome, and often leads to mistakes.The NC cutting of pipes includes joint cutting and hole cutting. The GGKW cutting machine invented by the mechanical engineering department of Wuhan University is a horizontal machine with a cylindrical coordinate system. It can cut many kinds of joint and hole. The automatic programming system is developed based on this kind of machine.AutoCAD has an open architecture, and provides many kinds of developing tool. ADS, AutoLISP, VBA and ObjectARX have their particular characteristic. ObjectARX is a new object-oriented developing tool, and is powerful on running speed of program, universalness and functionality. This article introduces the method and technique using ObjectARX and the way of customize the AutoCAD menus.The graphical programming software is developed using ObjectARX and Visual C++, and is for joint program. The software can directly read the drawing file, and store the pipe size in the extended record and extended data, and retrieve the pipe position by the axis position. After the user sets the data and selects the axes, the program is generated automatically.The holes programming software is also developed using Visual C++. It is used on cutting some holes in a pipe. It provides a dialog-box interface, and can generate the program only if the user inputs the position and size of holes.The auto-programming system has solved the programming problem of the pipe-cutting machine, and is very significant.