Development of process planning and machining system for machine-independent STEP-NC data

The current NC data format (ISO 6983) puts restrictions on CNC machine tools because the NC data are specified in a low-level language, describing machine axis motion and some machine instructions. STEP-NC remedies the shortcomings of current NC data and has many advantages. However, to realize STEP-NC based machining systems, it is necessary to perform machining feature extraction, to generate machine-specific information, and to create a relationship between coordinate systems without disturbing data porting. This paper proposes the solutions for these problems and introduces a prototype of STEP-NC based process planning and a machining system.