FAPT COMPILER FOR CNC MACHINES

Abstract

Any machine tool which processes an object needs to know two things viz., the geometry of the object being processed and the processes (which usually involves information about various movements, machine tolerances etc.) to be performed on the object. When the processing involved and the geometry of the object is complex, human involvement becomes unrealiable and we need to use CNC (computerised numerically controlled) machines. In the same way as assemby language does not permit abstractions as compared to a higher level language like PASCAL, direct programming of a CNC is both primitive and tedious. A higher level language FAPT (Fanuc Automatic Programming Tool) is used to write programs which is compiled into a lower level language called g-code which is fed to the CNC. The compiler aims to accept the FAPT language and to generate the program acceptable to a CNC machine.