{"id":48631,"date":"2025-06-25T12:40:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T12:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moduleworks.com\/?p=48631"},"modified":"2025-07-01T10:16:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T10:16:16","slug":"eliminating-all-cnc-machine-crashes-by-2030","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moduleworks.com\/de\/eliminating-all-cnc-machine-crashes-by-2030\/","title":{"rendered":"Eliminating all CNC Machine Crashes by 2030?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Yavuz\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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By Dr. Yavuz Murtezaoglu<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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A Bold Vision for the Manufacturing Industry<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In my last article \u201cA Brief History of Simulation in CAM Software<\/a>„, I talked about my 30 year journey in developing and deploying CAM simulation technology. In this article, I would like to offer my insights on a current topic that excites me a lot because it concerns the immediate future of the entire industry and how CNC machining can be greatly improved.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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From Automotive Safety to CNC Machining<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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First of all, I would like to share a statement from Volvo, a car maker known for placing great emphasis on safety. Volvo has built a reputation for making strong, sturdy cars that make drivers feel safe behind the wheel. They made the following statement and announced it publicly:<\/p>

„Volvo has set a bold vision that no Volvo car should be involved in a fatal or serious injury crash by 2030“<\/p>

Now, imagine transferring this bold vision to CNC machining and eliminating all CNC machine crashes by 2030. For an engineer, this is a very exciting challenge because there are large number of technical problems to solve along the way.<\/p>

Is this vision achievable by 2030? Let’s take a look together.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Our Journey with the Collision Avoidance System (CAS)\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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At ModuleWorks, our journey started 10 years ago with a European machine tool builder developing high-end 5-axis CNC machines. They asked us to provide a real-time simulation capable of identifying collisions and stopping the machine before a crash could occur. With the support and close cooperation of the CNC control manufacturer, we were able to get data on the position of the machine components about one second into the future. This one second buffer allowed us to calculate the trajectory of all the moving parts of the machine and the material removed from the workpiece and reliably determine whether a collision was imminent. We called this CAS – Collision Avoidance System.<\/p>

When we took on this challenge, we knew our simulation engine was fast and powerful enough to detect collisions in real time thanks to our collaboration with one of the world\u2019s largest machine tool vendors who had developed their collision avoidance solution based on our technology. But it was only when we started work on an industrial PC, where the CAS algorithms receive signals directly from the machine\u2019s CNC and PLC, that we realized the true scope of the challenge.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Understanding the True Nature of CNC Machines\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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A state-of-the-art CNC machine is like a turntable playing an LP without knowing what it is playing: The turntable strictly follows the grooves on the LP but has no idea if it is playing jazz or pop music. If there is a defect on the LP, it might play the same track forever. Fortunately, a turntable does not crash when the LP is defective, but it doesn\u2019t know \u201cthe context“ of what it is doing. Similarly, a CNC machine gets an NC program and runs this program strictly, without knowing what the NC program is going to do. Basically, a CNC machine must trust the user to feed it with a good NC program, either written manually on the machine control or generated by a CAM system.<\/p>

Most CNC machines have a tool table that numbers all the tools, and they have some basic data for performing the tool radius and tool length compensation to deal with tool wear and to adjust the motion accordingly.<\/p>

A simulation system running on an IPC with real time look-ahead access to a CNC control can create all the positions and orientations of the moving machine parts (table, spindle etc.) from the NC program. It can also update the in-process workpiece during machining. This is critical for distinguishing between real and false collisions and is only possible if the removed material is properly included in the calculation.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Overcoming Engineering Challenges<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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After several person-years of intensive work from the ModuleWorks team, the machine tool vendor and the control maker, we resolved hundreds of technical challenges and achieved our goal: we were able to safely avoid collisions in both manual and automatic modes without raising any false collisions.<\/p>

What does this mean? The quality of a collision avoidance system is based on two important factors:<\/p>