CNC system is the control center of a CNC machine which can create numerical control program by human-computer interaction according to the design drawing, technique, and process parameters. These numerical control programs will be converted into electric pulses to control the movement of servo system to drive the whole CNC machines.
Traditional numerical control (NC) machine uses photoelectric reader to read the processing information on paper tape to process the parts. Computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine uses minicomputer as control unit. It read the processing information from the computer that photoelectric reader is not needed. The advanced CNC machine can program on the computer or receive the information from CAPP to realize automatically programming. It is the base of computer-integrated manufacturing.
Modern CNC system commonly has following functions:- Simultaneous servo position and velocity control of the axis
- In-process cutting process monitoring
- System troubleshooting
- Online part programming with graphical assistance
- Multi-task parallel processing and parallel programming
- Virtual machining simulation
- Monitoring of controller and machine tool performance
- Online testing