Control of a three-axis CNC machine using PLC S7 1200 with the Mach3 software adapted to a Modbus TCP/IP network

In this study, a control architecture is developed using the Mach3 software adapted to the Modbus TCP/IP network together with the programmable logic controller S7-1200. The implementation of this nonstandardized control system yielded high-precision results in the independent axes and in their overall performances. For 90 samples, we achieved an average precision of 27.7 μm for the independent movement of the axles and an average precision of 30.3 μm for the simultaneous movement of all the axles in three dimensions.