Low cost shop floor DNC system : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the postgraduate Masters of Technology in Automation & Control at Massey University

Abstract

Direct/Distributed Numerical Control (DNC) has a vital role in delivering a successful Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) strategy. DNC is the most popular form of factory automation system in the shop floor environment. Its core function is to enable manufacturing information to flow smoothly and efficiently to and from the shop floor facilities. The current New Zealand small to medium manufacturers are unwilling to make large financial investment in the more expensive packages, and hence, there is a need for a cost effective DNC application software within this sector of the industry. The research conducted for this project focuses on the application of a multiport serial card, and the development of a low cost DNC application software that can be implemented in the small to medium size companies for transferring data and other manufacturing data such as drawing files, and computerised numerical control (CNC) programs. In addition, the research also looks at methods to allow remote access to the system through the World Wide Web (WWW). In order to achieve the objectives mentioned above, a powerful and user-friendly user interface programming tool kit — Borland's Delphi 4 was adopted as the key development tool. Delphi 4 is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) package that is fully compatible to the Multiport's senal programming library, and majority of the Microsoft's remote access technology such as Object Linking and Embedding technology (OLE) or ActiveX.