1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a numerical controller which displays a virtual control panel for operating an external device and displaying the status of the external device.
2. Description of the Related Art
When external devices are connected to a numerical controller and are used, a control panel having buttons and lamps may be added to operate the external devices and display the statuses of the external devices. In this case, a user needs to bear the cost of adding the control panel, in addition to the cost of purchasing the external devices. It is thus conceivable to display a virtual control panel on a display of the numerical controller and operate the virtual control panel using a key input device or a touch panel, instead of adding pieces of hardware such as a button and a lamp. The virtual control panel eliminates the need for the cost of adding a control panel and allows easier addition and change of buttons and lamps which are components of the virtual control panel.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-292942 discloses a virtual control panel which is enabled to operate an external device and display the status of the external device on a screen by setting the color, name, displayed character color, signal address to be assigned, and the like of each button or lamp to be displayed on the screen. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-250025 discloses a control panel which allows the arrangement, size, shape, and the like of a switch to be changed.
A virtual control panel suffers from the problem of reduced workability when many buttons and lamps are handled. For example, an external device to be operated and a status signal to be checked may vary among different workpieces to be machined and different work processes even in one machine tool. For this reason, there is a need to efficiently and accurately operate and check a signal among many signals.
An increase in the number of buttons and lamps to be displayed on a virtual control panel increases the display space of the virtual control panel, which leads to an inability to operate and check the virtual control panel while checking a different screen. It is thus conceivable to display a virtual control panel in a region of a screen and use one among a plurality of virtual control panels.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-292942 described above makes no mention of a plurality of virtual control panels. In contrast, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-250025 discloses handling of a plurality of virtual control panels. The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-250025, however, requires an operator to perform the operation of selecting a desired virtual control panel from among a plurality of virtual control panels stored to display the virtual control panel. If many buttons and lamps are handled, the operation of changing a virtual control panel is performed with high frequency to display a desired button or lamp among the buttons and lamps. This reduces workability.
Under the circumstances, the present invention has an object to provide a numerical controller for displaying a virtual control panel which can automatically display, at a part of a screen, a virtual control panel having necessary buttons and lamps among a plurality of virtual control panels, depending on the situation.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, a numerical controller for displaying a virtual control panel includes a display which displays a virtual control panel composed of an operation key for operating a machine and a lamp indicating operating information of a machine, a virtual control panel definition information storage section in which a plurality of components of each of a plurality of the virtual control panels are defined and stored, a virtual control panel association section which sets association of a command code to be given by an NC program with each of the virtual control panels that is composed of the defined components and whether to display or hide the virtual control panel, and a virtual control panel display execution section which, when the NC program is executed, and one of the command codes set in the virtual control panel association section is read, displays or hides one of the virtual control panels that corresponds to the command code.
The numerical controller may further include a virtual control panel display attribute setting section which sets a command code to be given by the NC program for changing display attributes including size and display position of each of the virtual control panels and a virtual control panel attribute changing section which changes, when the NC program is executed and one of the command codes for changing display attributes is read, the size and display position of one of the virtual control panels that corresponds to the command code.
The numerical controller can further include a definition information input/output section which inputs and outputs virtual control panel definition information stored in the virtual control panel definition information storage section.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, a numerical controller for displaying a virtual control panel includes a display which displays a virtual control panel composed of an operation key for operating a machine and a lamp indicating operating information of a machine, a virtual control panel definition information storage section in which a plurality of components of each of a plurality of the virtual control panels are defined and stored, a virtual control panel association section which sets association of a signal address to be used in a sequence program with each of the virtual control panels that is composed of the defined components and whether to display or hide the virtual control panel, and a virtual control panel display execution section which, when the sequence program is executed, and one of the signal addresses set in the virtual control panel association section is output, displays or hides one of the virtual control panels that corresponds to the signal address.
The numerical controller may further include a virtual control panel display attribute setting section which sets a signal address to be used in the sequence program for changing display attributes including size and display position of each of the virtual control panels and a virtual control panel attribute changing section which changes, when the sequence program is executed and one of the signal addresses for changing display attributes is output, the size and display position of one of the virtual control panels that corresponds to the signal address.
The numerical controller may further include a definition information input/output section which inputs and outputs virtual control panel definition information stored in the virtual control panel definition information storage section.
According to the present invention, there can be provided a numerical controller for displaying a virtual control panel which automatically displays, at a part of a screen, one having necessary buttons and lamps suited to the situation among a plurality of virtual control panels.
The foregoing and other objects and features of the present invention will become more apparent from the following description of an embodiment thereof, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
The schematic configuration of a numerical controller which controls a machine tool will be described with reference to
A processor 11 of a numerical controller 30 controls the whole of the numerical controller 30 in accordance with a system program stored in a ROM 12. The ROM 12 stores a program for implementing the function of operating an external device and displaying the status of the external device in the numerical controller 30. The ROM 12 also stores a program for implementing the function of displaying a virtual control panel according to the present invention, and the program performs (a) setting buttons and lamps which are components to be displayed on a screen, (b) setting a plurality of virtual control panels using the buttons and lamps that are set components, and (c) automatically displaying, at a part of the screen, one having necessary buttons and lamps suited to the situation among the plurality of set virtual control panels.
A plurality of soft keys 25 are displayed at a fixed position at an end of a display screen 27 (
An axis control circuit 15 receives an axis movement command from the processor 11 and outputs the axis command to a servo-amplifier 16. The servo-amplifier 16 receives the axis command and drives a servomotor which is provided in a machine tool 40.
An SRAM or the like is used as a RAM 13, and various types of data are stored in the RAM 13. A nonvolatile memory 14 stores an interface screen (see
The process of (1) creating virtual control panels, (2) displaying a virtual control panel on the display device and operating the virtual control panel, (3) displaying a virtual control panel suited to the situation, and (4) inputting and outputting setup data for a virtual control panel, using the pieces of hardware of the numerical controller 30 described above will be described below.
Data on a component such as a button or a lamp of a virtual control panel is first stored in the nonvolatile memory 14 of the numerical controller 30. The data stored in the nonvolatile memory 14 is referred to as “button/lamp attribute data.” A case where buttons and lamps are set as components of a virtual control panel will be taken as an example in the following description.
An operator can give instructions to execute a virtual control panel creation program stored in the ROM 12 of the numerical controller 30, using input means (the keyboard 23, button 24, or soft keys 25) of the numerical controller 30. When the virtual control panel creation program starts being executed, a list of setup screens (a virtual control panel creation screen 50) shown in
If the operator selects “Display of button/lamp setup screen” (51) from the virtual control panel creation screen 50 shown in
At the same time as the setting of the buttons and lamps, respective ID numbers are assigned to the buttons and lamps. In the example in
For ID number 1 of button/lamp, the type is set to “button”, the signal address is set to “Y1.0”, the name is set to “button A”, the background color and character color when the signal is on are set to “gray” and “red”, respectively, and the background color and character color when the signal is off are set to “gray” and “blue”, respectively.
For ID number 2 of button/lamp, the type is set to “lamp”, the signal address is set to “X1.0”, the name is set to “lamp A”, the background color and character color when the signal is on are set to “red” and “white”, respectively, and the background color and character color when the signal is off are set to “gray” and “white”, respectively.
For ID number 3 of button/lamp, the type is set to “lamp”, the signal address is set to “X1.1”, the name is set to “lamp B”, the background color and character color when the signal is on are set to “green” and “white”, respectively, and the background color and character color when the signal is off are set to “gray” and “white”, respectively.
As described above, if the buttons and lamps are set, as shown in
After pieces of data on components such as buttons and lamps of virtual control panels are set, data for setting which ones of the buttons and lamps to arrange in each virtual control panel to be displayed on the display device 22 is stored as a piece of “virtual control panel first attribute data” in the nonvolatile memory 14 of the numerical controller 30.
When the operator selects “First example of virtual control panel setup screen” (52) from the virtual control panel creation screen 50 shown in
When the operator selects “Second example of virtual control panel setup screen” (53) from the virtual control panel creation screen 50 shown in
After buttons and lamps are set in the virtual control panels VCP1, VCP2, VCP3, . . . , as shown in
In the setup example shown in
Examples in which a corresponding one of the virtual control panels VCP1, VCP2, VCP3, and VCP4 whose display sizes and initial display positions are set as shown in
When the operator selects “Third example of virtual control panel setup screen” (54) from the virtual control panel creation screen 50 shown in
The operator can set M-codes for changing the size, on-screen display position, and alignment direction of each virtual control panel already set (initialized) on the setup screen shown in
The association of each virtual control panel with M-codes (or signals) can be set from the setup screen as shown in
When the creation of the virtual control panels ends, the operator switches the display mode of the display device 22 of the numerical controller 30 from virtual control panel creation mode to normal display mode. A virtual control panels is displayed on the display screen 27 of the display device 22 on the basis of pieces of data (
[Step SA01] The on/off status at each assigned signal address is read.
[Step SA02] A graphic is displayed according to the on/off status at each signal address.
[Step SA03] It is determined whether any soft key has been pressed or not. If any soft key has been pressed (YES), the processing proceeds to step SA04. On the other hand, if no soft key has been pressed (NO), the processing returns to step SA01 to continue the process.
[Step SA04] The on/off status at a corresponding signal address is changed. The processing returns to step SA01 to continue the process.
[Step SB01] The on/off status at each assigned signal address is read.
[Step SB02] A graphic is displayed according to the on/off status at each signal address. The processing returns to step SB01.
Such a virtual control panel is displayed so as to be superimposed on a part of an already displayed screen (see
Generally, many of the display devices 22 in controllers of machine tools each include soft keys 25, as shown in
In the numerical controller 30, one of virtual control panels set using
However, in some cases, it may be desirable to automatically select and display a virtual control panel in which only necessary buttons and lamps suited to a machining situation in which a workpiece is machined using a machine tool are set. In such a case, an M-code or a signal address associated with each virtual control panel is set. Each virtual control panel is switched between display and non-display by giving the associated M-code in a machining program (see
In
In
[Step SC01] An NC program (or a sequence program) is executed.
[Step SC02] It is determined whether there is an M-code command (or a signal switch) in the running NC program (or the running sequence program). If there is an M-code command (or a signal switch) (YES), the processing proceeds to step SC03. On the other hand, if there is neither an M-code command nor a signal switch (NO), the processing waits for an M-code command (or a signal switch).
[Step SC03] It is determined whether a virtual control panel is being displayed. If the virtual control panel is being displayed (YES), the processing proceeds to step SC04. On the other hand, if the virtual control panel is not being displayed (NO), the processing proceeds to step SC05.
[Step SC04] The virtual control panel is hidden, and the processing returns to step SC02.
[Step SC05] The virtual control panel is displayed, and the processing returns to step SC02.
Pieces of data which are set using the setup screens as shown in
As has been described above, according to the embodiment of the present invention, a virtual control panel to be displayed on a screen is automatically selected as needed. This eliminates the need to display a virtual control panel across a screen and the need to select a target virtual control panel each time a button or a lamp needs to be operated or checked and improves workability. Also, only necessary buttons and lamps are displayed, which prevents erroneous operation and check and simplifies work. Additionally, a virtual control panel is displayed in a minimum necessary display space, which reduces an area where the virtual control panel overlaps with a different screen and improves workability. Moreover, the size and display position of a virtual control panel can be changed by an M-code command or a signal switch, and an easy-to-see, easy-to-use virtual control panel can be displayed according to an already displayed screen. This improves workability.
Furthermore, setup data for a virtual control panel can be input and output, which facilitates movement and copying of a virtual control panel to another machine tool.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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2012-135709 | Jun 2012 | JP | national |