When the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) sets a bold goal — such as 3D printing the Strati electric car live at IMTS 2014 — they call it a moonshot. IMTS spark will witness a moonshot that can change the trajectory of the U.S. machine tool industry. The “launching pad” of this effort is a 3D printed machine tool base with damping that is an order of magnitude higher than traditional castings.
In this discussion, the control and interface design for the concrete base machine tool are presented. The architecture developed leverages a number of open-source projects, including MachineKit and the Robot Operating System (ROS). This open architecture, along with the ability to embed sensors into the concrete base, provides unique opportunities for both control of the tool and process monitoring. It also provides a platform that is easily extensible and enables robust, high-bandwidth multi-machine communication.
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