Laser Cutting Machine Management And Control System Developed

With the transfer of the World Plant to China, it has been an urgent task to accelerate the development of domestic manufacturing and improve the producing equipments and the process technology. As an advanced method of fabrication, the laser cutting process has been widely used in manufacturing, for such merits as high cutting speed, high degree of accuracy, flexibility and shaping quickly. With the development and mature of the computer technology and numerical control, both of them are applied to manufacturing to implement the process automation. Referring to the basic idea of FMS (Flexible Manufacturing System), a set of management and control system realized by the computer and CNC is developed for the laser cutting machine, including the CAD/CAM system, the computer-aided nesting optimization software and the sub-control module.P2 series AC servo motors and drivers of Japanese SANYO Co. are adopted as the driver element, and HUST I-3 CNC of Taiwan YITU Co., configured with the internal PLC, is selected as the sub-controller. The CAD/CAM software in computer, developed in Visual C++ 6.0 based on Windows 2000 operating system, is modularly programmed with structured design. MFC ODBC technology is applied to manage the database of products and materials. The computer-aided nesting optimization system is designed for the nesting of two-dimensional irregular-shaped parts in rectangle sheets with the aim of minimum wastage. The automatic programming module is used to generate NC codes for the corresponding nesting graphics. With the NC codes downloaded into CNC and the help of the monitoring interface of CAM, the stocks cutting process can be performed automatically. The whole CAD/CAM software works steadily and can be extended by adding extra function modules.To meet the large-scale cutting stock process, a heuristic approach is proposed, which represents the sheet and part geometries in discrete form to arrange the parts on the sheet quickly and easily. The method avoids the complexity in the geometry of the parts and sheets and achieves quick nesting optimization. The algorithm is also programmed to form the stand-alone nesting software, and is proved fit for massive cutting stock process. The sub-control module is designed to automate the cutting process and realize the machine's operations such as moving home, jog movement and auto run.