Contouring with DC Motors - a Practical Experience

The system was developed to address some difficulties encountered in a flame cutter that cuts metal sheets based on an intelligent controller. In the existing system an optical sensor is used for the feedback that tracks the drawing-into 1:1 scale. The new proposal is to modify the entire system using stored-programs with feedback generated from shaft sensors. Thus the proposed system uses AUTOCAD software for drawing implementation. The application software developed in the project extracts the minimum information necessary for the controller from the AutoCAD file (DxF). This process creates a new file (information_file) containing the path information. A unique discretization process is proposed to generate suitable data points to the controller using the information_file. The algorithm developed minimizes the data points to be stored and to be sent to the controller as reference data. The controller, in essence, tracks the drawing within the given accuracy, while maintaining the correct flame speed. It is shown that a simple controller with cost-effective hardware can implement the contouring-controller for a flame cutter. Some experimental and simulated results are presented. The information necessary for a beginner to start-off with a contouring controller is elaborated