Industrial Automation Services

What is CNC

Computer Numerical Control (CNC) or Numerical control (NC) refers to the automation of machine tools that are operated by abstractly programmed commands encoded on a storage medium, as opposed to manually controlled via handwheels or levers or mechanically automated via cams alone.

What is EMC, the Enhanced Machine Control Software

EMC2 is a software implementation of a CNC interpreter and a motion control system that can be adapted to mill, lathes, punches, and other motion driven machining applications.  For this application EMC was integrated to replace the original OEM supplied motion control due to lack of functionality and high maintenance costs. The National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), US Department of Commerce are the original creators of the EMC software and a major continuing contributor to software development related to EMC.  EMC, like Linux and other General Public License (GPL) software is freely avaible for public use under the terms of the GPL licensing, witch basically states that changes to the source need to be given back to project for public use.  This approach has grown an active user and integrator community, both commercial and non-commercial.

How Ai Control Systems put EMC work for this machine

We designed this replacement motion control system to meet the requirements of the previous proprietary motion control solution. One of the nice outcomes of the integration project was that all of the existing wiring, contactors and pneumatics where left as is. The CNC controller software, EMC, was designed to be flexible as far as specifying the I/O and defining the machine operation.

This design was also made with all standard components it is a standard PC with standard electrical components in a 19" rack enclosure. It uses Linux with a real time kernel modal, just like many of the embedded devices based on the Linux platform. It is an IT supportable PC as well as a CNC motion controller. It has no auxiliary motion controller. This hi resolution micro steeping application was extremely cost effective and far more capable then it predecessor. It is programmed in standard G-Code, which is a standard going back the early days of computing that still is used in the majority of machine shops today.

This machine was an open loop stepper drive solution. EMC2 works with servos and steppers in closed loop as well as open loop configurations. Ai controls can configure package and test a solution based off this GPL solution for both large and small applications.