Development of cutting tools information coding rules for the tools management system

This paper proposes two types of tools information coding rules to meet the requirements of the code marking and identifying in a tools management system. Besides, the tools classification is briefly introduced at first, which is beneficial to establish the tools coding rules. Then rigid coding rule is presented. It can satisfy most the requirements but the fatal limitations of lack of flexibility and extensibility, and difficult to classify, makes it not the ideal code structure. So based on the rigid code, the flexible code rule is developed, which overcomes all the issues of rigid code as far as our research. It meets the requirements and provides the conditions for the next step of our research - code laser marking and identifying; then construct the tools management system.