New work is in progress on a CORBA interface standard for online interactive communication with DMIS-based Coordinate Measurement Machines (CMMs). This work is being pursued for submission to CAM-I via a recently organized object technology working committee of the North American DMIS Users Group. We will explore how to build upon this work for integration with existing manufacturing frameworks, especially the Sematech CIM Framework and the NIIP architecture. This would provide a well defined factory-wide mechanism for the control of CMMs, for the (near real-time) online query of inspection data from such equipment, for the immediate feedback of such inspection data into a comprehensive factory floor process control system, and for offline simulation of CMM operation and interactive DMIS program generation. Phase 1 will explore which existing manufacturing object frameworks can readily support such extension, and is expected to identify one or more practical and efficient mechanisms for integrating this DMIS object standard into these manufacturing frameworks. Phase 2 will develop the actual framework interface and provide a prototype implementation of this interface to integrate the DAIS object standard within one or more manufacturing frameworks, and provide test stubs. Commercial applications:The direct commercial application of this research will be to provide a framework-compliant interface to a variety of dimensional inspection equipment, especially CMMs. This allows other framework applications to directly access inspection data, providing direct feedback within a manufacturing workcell. A framework-based process control system could track the progress of a workpiece from a CNC machine, for example, through to inspection, and could immediately feed back out-of-tolerance conditions to automatically adjust cutter operation on the CNC machine. This also allows other framework applications, such as CAD systems, to generate inspection sequences via object manipulation, and to control inspection equipment operations, which is quite useful for on-machine inspection and other advanced manufacturing techniques.
