Today a trend towards flexible and re-configurable manufacturing systems, which can be easily adapted to new technologies and processes, can be observed. In order to meet these requirements open architecture with modular software structure is desirable. Moreover PC based architecture can have high cost-performance as well as easy maintainability. PC based open architecture on Windows operating system will make it easier to add value to equipment with autonomous and intelligent capabilities using many Windows applications.
This paper describes the design and implementation of the man-machine interface (MMI) part of the PC based (Windows95/98) open wire electrical discharge machine (WEDM) numerical controller (NC). The main roles of the MMI part are providing user interfaces and controlling NC kernel.
To achieve openness, this paper makes an object oriented model of the virtual WEDM which is virtualized conceptually from real WEDM and this paper provides window based open graphic user interface (GUI). This can be opened by object oriented modular structure. With this GUI, user can manage the virtual WEDM model with user-defined message based communication. This virtual WEDM model was mapped on real hardware NC kernel automatically with user-defined communication packets. So the whole MMI system can be open structure. As implemented with full software manner, so this MMI system is hardware independent.
