What’s CNC Machining Software?

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CNC machining software is an operator program interface for controlling industrial manufacturing machinery. CNC is the abbreviation of “computer numerical control”. A machine is loaded with instructions on how to make a product based on its precise but purely numerical description.
With the invention of solid-state electronics and the age of exponential miniaturization beginning around 1950, components in commercial products required relatively small precision tolerances. It was too cumbersome to control the machinery to manually fabricate such detailed lever and cam components. The first numerically controlled machines read a paper tape punched with coded holes to represent their spatial positioning and to control their precise movement with servo motors.

Modern CNC machining, which revolutionized large-scale manufacturing, remains essentially the same in principle. The instructions that control a machine are stored on a computer’s spinning magnetic hard drive or on static digital flash drives. The fundamental workings of most machines have not changed, and therefore neither has the instruction set. The most significant changes have occurred in the CNC machining software.

There are many types of CNC machines. One of the most common are lathes. A block of material such as wood or metal is held stationary or moved with precision, as in the case of axial spinning on a lathe. It is formed by the subtraction of material from a sharp drill bit specific to the high-revolution task that moves along the contour of the desired shape. The basic function of CNC machining software is to map, or model, this three-dimensional shape into its Cartesian xyz axis coordinates.

The term computer numerical control machining is accurate. A lathe is first calibrated to the 0-0-0 coordinates of its target and its drilling progresses to the next assigned set of numbered coordinates, and the next, according to its mapped instructions. In nascent times, this was the literal method. The machines were entered in a linear sequence of a series of three numbers, all entered with a numeric keypad according to a designer’s calculations and measurements.

Almost all modern CNC machining software is custom integrated with the specific machine; each has its own mechanical specification and therefore cannot be controlled well with any generic, retail or open source code. As the processing power of electronic hardware has increased, CNC machining computer programs have become more powerful and easier to use. Computers are now capable of translating the analog vectors and curves that define most shapes into digital numbers, and graphical user interfaces such as CAD, or computer aided design, have been incorporated into CNC machining software.

CNC machines were created so that an operator could simply press buttons to start, stop and reset. The sophistication of the software also frees the craftsman to become a creative designer, simply drawing and automatically computerizing the design numerically and having a machine make it. Advances in digital telecommunications have further revolutionized industrial manufacturing with the ability to upload code to a machine thousands of miles away for single-cycle prototyping. New home/garage CNC machines with desktop footprints are available, including 3D printers that reverse the purpose of a lathe, depositing a reservoir of material such as plastic in a software-defined shape, seemingly creating something out of nothing.

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