Today, computer numerical control (CNC) machines are found almost
everywhere, from small job shops in rural communities to Fortune 500 companies
in large urban areas. Truly, there is hardly a facet of manufacturing that is
not in some way touched by what these innovative machine tools can do.
Everyone involved in the manufacturing environment should be well aware of
what is possible with these sophisticated machine tools. The design engineer,
for example, must possess enough knowledge of CNC to perfect dimensioning and
tolerancing techniques for workpieces to be machined on CNC machines. The tool
engineer must understand CNC in order to design fixtures and cutting tools for
use with CNC machines. Quality control people should understand the CNC machine
tools used within their company in order to plan quality control and
statistical process control accordingly. Production control personnel should be
abreast of their company's CNC technology in order to make realistic production
schedules. Managers, foremen, and team leaders should understand CNC well
enough to communicate intelligently with fellow workers. And, it goes without
saying that CNC programmers, setup people, operators, and others working
directly with the CNC equipment must have an extremely good understanding of
CNC.
In this presentation, we will explore the basics of CNC, showing you much of
what is involved with using these sophisticated machine tools. Our primary goal
will be to teach you how to learn about CNC. For readers who will eventually be
working directly with CNC machine tools, we will show you the basics of each
major CNC function. Additionally, we will make suggestions as to how you can
learn more about each CNC function as it applies to your particular CNC
machine/s. At the completion of this presentation, you should have a good
understanding of how and why CNC functions as it does and know those things you
must learn more about in order to work with any style of CNC machine tool.
For readers who are not going to be working directly with CNC equipment in
the near future, our secondary goal will be to give you a good working
knowledge of CNC technology. At the completion of this presentation, you should
be quite comfortable with the fundamentals of CNC and be able to communicate
intelligently with others in your company about your CNC machine tools.
To proceed in an organized manner, we will be using a key concepts approach
to all presentations. All important functions of CNC are organized into ten key
concepts (We'll show five of the ten key concepts in this presentation. All
five are related to programming). Think of it this way. If you can understand
ten basic principles, you are well on your way to becoming proficient with CNC.
While our main focus will be for the two most popular forms of CNC machine
tools (machining centers and turning centers), these ten key concepts can be
applied to virtually any kind of CNC machine, making it easy to adapt to any
form of CNC equipment. With so many types of CNC machine tools in existence, it
is next to impossible for this presentation to be extremely specific about any
one particular type. The key concepts allow us to view the main features of CNC
in more general terms, stressing why things are handled the way they are even
more than the specific techniques used with any one particular CNC machine
tool.
With the broad background we give, you should be able to easily zero in on
any kind of CNC machine tool you will be working with. As yet a third goal,
this presentation should help instructors of CNC. The key concepts approach we
show has been proven time and time again during live presentations in CNC
courses. This method of presentation will help instructors organize CNC into
extremely logical and easy to understand lessons.
