Integrated System Technology Innovation (1)

CAD has been the protagonist of CAD/CAM integrated system technology innovation in recent years. In contrast, the CAM field showed undue silence. However, with the increasing demand for informatization, companies are also keenly looking forward to CAM. We hope that the wind of technological innovation will be blown into the CAM field. Emerging capabilities that are compatible with CAD systems are powerful, more consistent with the concept of process engineering, and easy to popularize. A new generation of CAM products.
As an important level of the entire integrated system, CAM integrates seamlessly with CAD and CAPP. It is convenient, fast, intelligent, and efficient for CNC production services. This is the eternal theme of CAM technology development. The new concept of object-oriented and process-oriented features has been echoed with object-oriented design and feature modeling in CAD technology. It has been successfully applied in some specialized CAM systems and has been necessary for the birth of a new generation of CAM. Accumulation of experience, technical reserves and ideological preparations. Today's CAM's difficulties in learning, mastering and application, and the conflict between the rapid development of production and the urgent requirements of CAM talents have become increasingly prominent, providing the market foundation for the maturity and development of the new generation of CAM.
The emerging new technologies and new processes in the manufacturing industry, such as high-speed machining technologies, also place higher demands on CAM technology. The development of network technology has freed the CAD/CAPP/CAM/CAE/PDM integration system from the constraints of space and is able to better adapt to the modern enterprise's production layout and production management requirements. In order to meet the requirements of the integrated system, the structural system and functional composition of CAM will inevitably undergo corresponding changes. Therefore, we have reason to believe that the new generation of CAM technology is being bred, developed and matured, and a new generation of CAM will emerge in the near future.
The following will analyze the development process of CAM technology, the current status of application of CAM, and the requirements of new technologies on CAM, and then make a subjective prediction on the development trend of CAM. It is also a bold idea for the structure system of the new generation CAM system. It is hoped that it will be beneficial to the research, selection and application of CAM in our country. We also hope to use this to exchange and improve with our peers.
First, the inevitability and development trend of the new generation of CAM production CAM technology has developed so far, regardless of the software and hardware platforms, system architecture, features have undergone enormous changes. There is also a huge difference in the functionality of today's popular CAM systems. In terms of its decision-making basic approach and target audience, it can be mainly divided into two major stages of development and can be considered as two generations of products.
First generation CAM: APT
The programming machine and some programming software developed on the professional system in the 1960s, such as: FANOC, Semess programming machine, the system structure is in the form of a special machine, the basic processing method is manual or auxiliary direct calculation of numerical control tool path, programming goals and objects are also It is a direct numerical tool path. Features are poor function, difficult operation, special plane.
Second-generation CAM: The system structure of the curved CAM system is generally a CAD/CAM hybrid system. The CAD model is well utilized. The geometric information is used as the final result to automatically generate machining tools. The degree of automation and intelligence have been greatly improved. Representative examples are UG, DUCT, Cimatron, and MarsterCAM. The basic feature is the local surface-oriented processing method, which shows that the degree of difficulty in programming is directly related to the complexity of the part, but it is not directly related to the product features such as process characteristics and process complexity. Although the time span of this period reached 20 years, the system grades varied greatly, and the level of intelligence was also different, but there was no qualitative change in the structural system. The author thinks it should belong to the same generation of products.
Looking at the development of CAM technology, we can draw the following conclusions:
1. The development of CAM is a process of continuous absorption and utilization of application results of CAD and its peripheral technologies. It is a process of continuous improvement in the level of automation and intelligence. It is the direction of CAM system structure and basic processing methods to adapt to the concept of engineering. The process of development.
2. The basic processing method of the system, that is, the programming target object plays a decisive role in the system's structure and level of intelligence. In the era of APT, the CAM system directly calculates the trajectory of the tool path. The second generation CAM system uses the CAD model as the target of programming to automatically generate tool path trajectories. Therefore, the level of automation and intelligence of the system has been greatly improved, and the operation of the system is more in line with the concept of engineering.
3. The basic processing mode of the second generation CAM system using the local geometric features of the CAD model as the target object has become a constraint factor in the further development of the level of intelligence and automation. Only by breaking through today's inherent patterns and developing a new generation of CAM systems: that is, the model-oriented, process-oriented CAM system can improve the level of CAM automation and intelligence to a new height.
4. It can be foreseen that a new generation of CAM systems that are bred, matured and developed will adopt object-oriented and process-oriented basic processing methods, which will greatly increase the level of automation and intelligence of the system. The system structure will be independent of CAD and CAPP systems, leaving room for the development of CAPP and more in line with the requirements of network integration. (To be continued)