Software Realization of Gantry Welding Robot Control System with PC+ Soft NC Mode

With the rapid development of modern welding industry, it is an important development direction to develop the intelligent welding numerical control (NC) system which is flexible, convenient to extending and based on uniform specification. In order to satisfy intelligent and automated demands of the Gantry welding robot, the system was modular designed according to the system functional requirements, based on the intelligent welding NC system which is PC+ soft NC mode. First, the equipment control layer was designed by using the Beckhoff controller and Beckhoff software, TwinCAT, and this layer communicates with equipment via EtherCAT and Profibus bus protocols. Then, the system management layer was designed by using Visual C# as a development tool. Finally, the quality and stability of the welding NC system was verified by some welding experiments.