The use of ordinary machining equipment for multi-species small batch production, in the production process of parts, usually blanks and products of the transportation, storage time accounted for 95% of the time of the production process, the time on the machine tool is only 5%. And this 5% of the real cutting process only 30%, the other 70% of the time for the positioning of the parts, clamping, tool change, measurement, machine tool adjustment and maintenance, as well as the removal of swarf, to be material. CNC machine tools only reduces the machine part of the non-cutting time and part of the process of parts handling, storage time (due to the ability to centralized processing), so in order to further improve labor productivity, shorten the parts production cycle, give full play to the utilization of machine tools, must be in the field of small and medium-sized batch production to further improve the degree of automation, automation of the various aspects of the above as far as possible. For example, the warehouse workpiece access automation, workpiece conveying and handling automation, workpiece loading and unloading automation, tool conveying and exchanging automation, tool life management automation on the machine tool as well as automatic tool wear detection and compensation, tool breakage automatic detection and automatic tool change, automatic measurement of the accuracy of the workpiece, automatic removal of swarf, the machine tool running state and processing state of the automatic monitoring and automatic diagnosis of malfunctions. Flexible manufacturing system is precisely for these requirements and the emergence of.
Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) is an automated manufacturing system controlled by a central computer. It is a number of automated machining machines (usually CNC machines and machining centers with tool changers) linked by a conveyor system. The conveyor delivers the workpiece on a pallet or other connecting device to each of the machining machines so that the workpiece is automatically machined. Flexibility means that several different workpieces can be processed at the same time through programming or minor adjustments.