Development of a Web-based collaborative manufacturing system for parallel kinematic machines

A Web-based collaborative manufacturing system has been developed for geographically dispersed team members to conduct design and manufacturing tasks over the Internet. It extends an existing single-location manufacturing system to a multi-location application with the implementation of browser/server computing model and the development tool of active server pages. In this system, a parallel kinematic machine (PKM) is used as the manufacturing tool. The major operations related to the PKM, such as pre-processing, parametric programming, adjustment computing, and cutter motion control, could be conducted online interactively and dynamically. In this paper, the PKM junctions and database of the system are presented, in which the activeX control technology and activeX data object are utilized. Examples are provided to illustrate the latest development of the research.