[step-manufacturing] Minutes of Conference Call on July 15

[Martin Hardwick]

Attendees
Andreas Archenti, KTH, Sweden
Martin Hardwick, STEP Tools, USA
David Loffredo, STEP Tools, USA
Aydin Nassehi, University of Bath, UK
Ronnie Fesperman, NIST, USA
Fred Proctor, NIST, USA
Mikael Hedlind, KTH, Sweden
Bob Erickson, Pratt & Whitney, USA
Joe Drescher, Pratt & Whitney, USA
Buzz Callaghan, IQL, USA
Larry Maggiano, Mitutoyo, USA

Apologies for Absence:
David Odendahl, Boeing, USA
Sid Venkatesh, Boeing, USA
Bengt Olsson, Sandvik, Sweden
Magnus Lundgren, KTH, Sweden

We discussed the recent addition of robots to the STEP-NC Explorer.  The 
team members have considerable concern about the wisdom of showing 
robots being used for machining tasks even if it is a nice demonstration 
of the flexibility of STEP-NC and the kinematics model in AP-214. STEP 
Tools agreed to update the STEP-NC explorer to give a warning about this 
whenever a robot is selected as a machine tool.

Andreas Archenti of KTH on modeling machine tool accuracy. KTH has a 
long history of measuring machine tool accuracy and has worked with many 
uses in Sweden to help them understand the accuracy of their machine 
tools and to characterize why different machines have different 
accuracies even when they were purchased at the same time, with the same 
configuration and from the same vendor.

ftp://ftp.steptools.com/private/Undecided/Stability_of_machining_systems_July_15_2011.pdf

KTH has developed a double ball bar that can be used to test the 
performance of a machine tool under different loads. They are developing 
software to predict the accuracy of tool paths from the measurements 
made by this bar.

A recording of this conference call is on the ftp site.  The next 
conference call will be at the regular times on July 29,
ftp://ftp.steptools.com/private/Undecided/stepmanuf_telecon_20110715.wmv

Martin Hardwick
Team Leader