Richard
Neal Executive Director,
Integrated Manufacturing
Technology Initiative gave the keynote
speech concerning manufacturing, interoperability, and cooperation
Benet Laboratories, Watervliet, NY
November 30, 2000
First Year Demonstration
The first demonstration was held on November
30, 2000 at the Benet Laboratories of Watervliet Arsenal. The Arsenal
is the oldest manufacturing arsenal in the USA. Founded in 1812 as
the USA's response to the better cannon of the Royal Navy, the Watervliet
Arsenal can claim to be the oldest high tech manufacturing facility
in the United States.
From CAM to Controller
The demonstration featured an FB Mach CAM system being used to make
the STEP-NC data, and a Bridgeport Machine Tool controller being used
to make the part. FB Mach is a Computer Aided Manufacturing system
developed by Honeywell FM&T for the Department of Energy. In the
demonstration it read a STEP file from a CAD system, an operator used
its advanced feature recognition capabilities to compute a
manufacturing plan, and the result was written as a STEP file
containing all the information required to make a part. The Super
Model read the data written by FB Mach and added the information to
its database. A Bridgeport Controller modified by Electro-Mechanical
Integrators (EMI) used the Intelligent Interface to read the
manufacturing data. The Intelligent Interface found the information
necessary for a milling machine to make the part, and it presented
that information in a form that is easy to process on the PC based
control.
