Numerical Control Programming: An Exciting Entry Point to Manufacturing Engineering Education

The irony of the manufacturing profession today is that even though there is increasing need for skilled manufacturing technologists and engineers, fewer high school seniors are selecting manufacturing as a career.A large part of the problem stems from the perception of what is actually involved.Machine control is often visualized to be "turning handles" (often greasy dirty ones at that).In reality though, this is simply not the case as it is primarily direct interaction with computer numerical control (CNC), or even computer aided manufacturing (CAM) software and machine simulators.Indeed, most equipment in an advanced machine laboratory does not have any actual handles at all, only virtual ones.This paper discusses how the exciting world of advanced manufacturing machine control can be introduced when algebra topics are being studied at high school.While teaching the basics of the Cartesian coordinate system a few simple numerical control machine codes are also explained.This enables students to compose the code required to complete simple movements of a cutter and understand concepts of computer related manufacturing.Free, easy to use simulation software allows the students to test their code.