[step-manufacturing] Advance notice: Manufacturing control interfaces for tape laying and fiber placement

[Martin Hardwick]

All,

This is an advance notice of a discussion on manufacturing control for composite tape laying machines that will take place next week. Right now these machines are "stuck in the 1950's" because each machine has its own custom CAM system and there is no possibility to share data or programs between different vendors machines.

The opportunity for STEP-Manufacturing is to make a common generic interface for tape laying and fiber placement machines that takes advantage of the work we have already done to enable model driven 3 and 5 axis milling and turning using STEP-NC.

In preparation, and as a first step in this discussion, Rick Murrish,  Boeing Associate Technical Fellow and Composite Design focal point for Boeing will give us a background talk on Composite design and data representation during the next STEP Manufacturing conference call at the regular times on Friday August 12.

Martin Hardwick
Team Leader ISO STEP-Manufacturing
Professor and Acting Head of Computer Science, RPI
President STEP Tools, Inc.