Development of ISO14649 Compliant CNC Milling Machine Operated by STEP-NC in XML Format

G-code, another name of ISO6983, has been a popular commanding language for operating machine tools. This Gcode, however, limits the usage of today's fast evolving high-performance hardware. For intelligent machines, the communications between machine and CAD/CAM departments become important, but the loss of information during generating G-code makes the production department isolated. The new standard for operating machine tools, named STEP-NC is just about to be standardized as ISO14649. As this new standard stores CAD/CAM information as well as operation commands of CNC machines, and this characteristic makes this machine able to exchange information with other departments. In this research, the new CNC machine operated by STEP-NC was built and tested. Unlike other prototypes of STEP-NC milling machines, this system uses the STEP-NC file in XML file form as data input. This machine loads information from XML file and deals with XML file structure. It is possible for this machine to exchange information to other databases using XML. The STEP-NC milling machines in this research loads information from the XML file, makes tool paths for two5D features with information of STEP-NC, and machines automatically without making G-code. All software is programmed with Visual C++, and the milling machine is built with table milling machine, step motors, and motion control board for PC that can be directly controlled by Visual C++ commands. All software and hardware modules are independent from each other; it allows convenient substitution and expansion of the milling machine. Example 1 in ISO14649-11 having the full geometry and machining information and example 2 having only the geometry and tool information were used to test the automatic machining capability of this system.