The Role of Computers in Manufacturing Engineering :: Technology

The Role of Computers in Manufacturing Engineering The use of the computer has had a positive impact on manufacturing engineering in many ways. Engineering is a term applied to the profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences, gained by study, experience and practice, is applied to the efficient use of the materials and forces of nature. The term engineer denotes a person who has received professional training in pure and applied sciences. The first and biggest positive impact on engineering has been the use of Computer Numerical Control machines (CNC); computers were first introduced to these controls in the early 1970’s. CNC machines typically replace or work in conjunction with some existing manufacturing process. For example before CNC machines a person using a drill press to machine holes would have to do a lot of work for themselves. They would have to place a drill in the drill chuck is secured in the spindle of the drill press. They can then select the desired speed for rotation, and activate the spindle. Then they manually pull on the quill lever to drive the drill into the work piece being machined. As you can see, there are a lot of manual steps required to use a drill press to drill holes. While this way may be acceptable for a small number of holes or parts. However, as quantities grow, so dose the likelihood for fatigue due to the tediousness of the operation. There are also more complicated machin ing operations that would require a much higher skill level of the person running the machining tool. The CNC machining center can be programmed to perform this operation in a much more automatic fashion. Everything that the drill press operator was doing manually will now be done by the CNC machine, including: placing the drill in the spindle, activating the spindle, positioning the work piece under the drill, machining the hole, and turning off the spindle. CNC works from a source code made on a computer that you just save as a file on your disk and insert it into the machine. The code can be made using two different ways, the first is just understanding the code, and by using the notepad program on you computer, you can just type it right out. This is the easiest way for very simple process, which doesn’t require much code. The second way is by using computer aided drafting (CAD) and computer aided manufacturing (CAM) programs on your computer.