The goal of our research is to develop a 'clean interface' between design and fabrication facilities for the production of custom machined parts. The research accomplishments are summarised: (1) creation of a new format for data exchange, Numerical Control Markup Language (NCML), (2) development of a prototype system to illustrate how NCML can be effectively used to conduct e-commerce for custom machined parts and (3) testing of the methodology with a number of parts obtained from three different sources: the Design Repository located at Drexel University, Manufacturing Quote, Inc., a commercial company that is in the business of matching buyers and sellers of custom machined parts and Stone Machine Co., a local machine shop that is typical of the type of fabrication facility which would use NCML.
['Robert B. Jerard', 'Ok-Hyun Ryou']
NCML: a data exchange format for internet-based machining