R&D And Application On Soft Open CNC Technology

Since the 90s of the 20th century, along with the fast development and extensively popularization of PC technology, the Open-Structure CNC system started to develop. The Open-Structure CNC system which has superior and stable performance, is easy to develop, maintain and update. It became hotspot soon as its appearance.There are three general ways to the Open CNC system: NC-based PC-embedded NC, PC-based NC-embedded and Soft Open CNC.Among them, the Soft Open CNC, perform the most or all of the NC controllor tasts based on the great power of the PC hardware, has the highest degree of openness. Now it's considered as the direction of the Open CNC technology development.The function of Soft Open CNC system can be extended by the SDK, and the capability of the system can be advanced by the low-cost PC hardware upgrade, and it's easy to develop friendly HMI and comfortable operation-mode because of the abundant of the PC multimedia resources.ServoWorks CNC technology is the result of the "next generation controller" project of MIT. ServoWorks has profound theories foundation, superior function, powerful performance and high degree of openness to the user, is a excellent platform to do the research of the Soft Open CNC technology.This paper based on the comprehensive research on the ServoWorks, developped X-100M CNC system and PLC program special for Machinine center using the ServoWorks Develop Kit for Visual Basic and the S-100M system framework. The paper also summarized the course of software system and the PLC programs develop.This paper laid an academic foundation and shared the actual experiment experience for the future work of the project (ServoWorks kernel research and high-performance CNC controllor for special machine based on Soft Open CNC technology, etc.). Also, the paper contributed itself to the popularization of the Soft Open CNC technology.