CNC is not only about hardware as the name might suggest i.e. computerized numerical control. As is evident from the explanation of the acronym itself, whenever computerized control is involved in the process it also requires some sort of software to run the unintelligent hardware to perform some activity which is mostly a manufacturing related activity in this case.There are various softwares available for carrying out computerized control of automatic manufacturing machines and one such software is the FlashCut CNC. Of course there are three parts to such softwares namely those involved in designing of the parts in the 2 or 3 dimensional space, the representation of those parts to the computer system and finally a software which tells the actual manufacturing machine such as the lathe or milling machine to carry out the actual cuts and operations in a timely and precise manner.
All these three aspects of the computerized manufacturing software will be briefly discussed in separate blogs in this series. We will move in a hierarchical fashion and begin our discussion with CAD software in the next blog followed by a short discussion on CAM and finally the CNC software in the requisite order and manner.