Meetings and Workshops on STEP-NC, STEP GD&T and Lean Manufacturing

[st-announce at steptools.com]

Dear Friends of STEP

Three important projects have been underway for much of this 
year. 

1. The Draft International Standard version of AP-238 has been
   prepared with 5-axis tool path enhancements suggested by
   Boeing and mapping table enhancements to improve clarity
   suggested by the European STEP-NC projects.
2. Early implementor's have been testing how to implement 
   AP-238 by converting APT tool path data to AP-238 and 
   developing interfaces on the CNC control to read this
   data and program the new Tool Control Path (TCP)
   interfaces now available on most advanced controls. 
3. The Geometric Dimensions and tolerances used for design
   (AP-203 and AP-214) have been harmonized with those used
   for manufacturing (AP-224 and AP-238) and measurement
   (AP-219).

I am pleased to announce that all three projects are now ready
for external discussion and we are planning three days of meetings
and workshops during the ISO meeting on October 5th, 6th and 7th
in Seattle (see https://www.uspro.org for registration information).

The morning of the first day will be spent on a technical review of
AP-219, AP-224 and AP-240. This will be followed in the afternoon by a 
review of the harmonized GD&T model and a discussion of implementation
plans and strategies for this model. In particular projects are forming
that will read AP-203 data and write AP-203 e2 data using new libraries
developed by STEP Tools and others.

The second day will be a lean manufacturing workshop. This day will 
discuss the business case for all the manufacturing protocols being
developed for STEP including AP-219, AP-224, AP-238 and AP-240. The
key technologies in the standards will also be discussed, prototype 
tools will be demonstrated and CAD/CAM and CNC vendors have been 
invited to give their perspective. 

Two of the highlights of the workshop will be a discussion of the
business case developed for the UK Navy for rapid manufacturing
in a depot, and an early implementation study of AP-238 performed
by Boeing for the 7E7 project. 

The workshop will include presentations from Japan, Korea, the UK
and Europe as well as the USA.

The third day meeting will be a detailed walkthru of the draft of
the AP-238 standard. We will look at the full scope of the standard,
examine the extensions added to support 5-axis tool paths as a result
of the early implementation study, look at the results of the mapping
table enhancements requested by the Europeans, and conclude with a
discussion of the four conformance classes proposed for STEP-NC: 
(1) CNC independent tool paths; (2) collision detection; 
(3) conditional programming and (4) generative programming.

The enclosures describe the workshop program and the status of
STEP-NC AP-238. I strongly encourage you to attend. The business
case for STEP-NC AP-238 is now quite compelling and you are
encouraged to give strong consideration to running a STEP-NC
AP-238 pilot program next year because the business processes
that are going to be supported by AP-238 will be finalized by the
end of 2005.

Martin Hardwick
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