Numerical Control Lathe Language Study

Peter D. Senkiw

Jan 1979 · U.S. Army Communications Research & Development Command

About this ebook

An examination of fifteen numerically controlled lathe programming systems was conducted to characterize them qualitatively and quantitatively. The report presents a description of each of the fifteen voluntary participants' systems. The report: describes the non-technical characteristics of each system--the business and operational characteristics such as hardware and software sources and costs, documentation, training, vendor support and maintenance; tabulates the capabilities of the languages for description of the geometrical configurations of the part being programmed, and the variety of the geometrical formats accepted by each system as manuscript statements; discusses the use of macros to simplify the writing of programs to perform the common operations of all lathe work--automatic roughing, finishing along a profile, threading, grooving and necking, drilling, boring, reaming and tapping; presents a brief discussion of the distinguishing characteristics of each system; describes the preparation of ten test parts for use in demonstrating the capabilities of the fifteen systems; describes the capabilities demonstrated by the fifteen systems to program the ten test parts; the amount of time required to write the program, and to debug it; it shows the success in processing and postprocessing the program, and the verification of the output tape.