CNC machines are widely used in production fields since they produce similar parts in a minimum time, at higher speed and with possibly minimum error. A control system is designed, implemented and tested to control the operation of a laboratory CNC milling machine having three axes that are moved by using a stepper motor attached to each axis. The control system includes two parts, hardware part and software part, the hardware part used a PC (works as controller) connected to the CNC machine through its parallel port by using designed interface circuit. The software part includes the algorithms needed to control the CNC. The sample needs to be machined is drawn by using one of the drawing software like AUTOCAD or 3D MAX and is saved in a well-known file format (DXF), then that file is fed to the CNC machine controller by the CNC operator, so that part will be machined by the CNC machine. The CNC controller using developed algorithms that reads the DXF file feeds to the machine, extracts (line, circle or arc) shapes from the file and generates commands to move the CNC machine axes so that these shapes can be machined.
University of Baghdad
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