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The Cybercut manufacturing system is a part of a larger research project currently conducted at the Integrated Manufacturing Lab. The project is to develop an integrated, fully-computerized design to manufacturing system. This revolutionary system contains a design tool, a process planner software, and a machine tool.

The goals of the project are to reduce the design to manufacturing time and to reduce the human intervention in the transition from the design phase to the manufacturing phase.

This system is changing the conventional concept of separating the design phase of a product from its manufacturing phase by forcing the designer to consider the available manufacturing options at the earlier stages of the design phase.

Two routes can be followed to reach the manufacturing stage. The first route requires the designer to use the WebCAD design software.

WebCAD is a Web-based destructive solid geometry (DSG) tool that allows users to create a design in the same way CyberCut's milling machine will ultimately create the final part: by subtracting material from a solid rectangular piece of stock. Throughout the design process, WebCAD will automatically check the design for feasibility, ensuring that the final design can be manufactured with Cybercut's resources.

The design files are then transferred to the process planner software.

The process planner chooses the set up sequence, the cutting tools and parameters, and generates the tool path for the features.

Finally, the NC codes generates by the process planner are transferred to specialized open architecture machine tool.

The second route allow for designs done on more generic CAD software, i.e., IDEAS, AutoCAD, etc. Those files are then transferred to a feature recognizer software, which is still in its developing stages. This software transforms the geometric boundary representations to features used by the process planner such as holes and pockets. The files are then transferred to the process planner and the same steps described for the first route are followed.

Link to a chart showing the detailed software modules and I/O in the Cybercut main pipeline.