TABLE OF CONTENTS Numerical Control technology as it is known today, emerged in the mid 20th century. It can be traced to the year of 1952, the U.S. Air Force, and the names of John Parsons and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, USA. It was not applied in production manufacturing until the early 1960's. The real boom came in the form of CNC, around the year of 1972, and a decade later with the introduction of affordable micro computers. The history and development of this fascinating technology has been well documented in many publications.
In the manufacturing field, and particularly in the area of metal working, Numerical Control technology has caused something of a revolution. Even in the days before computers became standard fixtures in every company and in many homes, the machine tools equipped with Numerical Control system found their special place in the machine shops. The recent evolution of micro electronics and the never ceasing computer development, including its impact on Numerical Control, has brought significant changes to the manufacturing sector in general and metalworking industry in particular.
In various publications and articles, many descriptions have been used during the years, to define what Numerical Control is. It would be pointless to try to find yet another definition, just for the purpose of this handbook. Many of these definitions share the same idea, same basic concept, just use different wording.
The majority of all the known definitions can be summed up into...
