PERESTROIKA AND OFF‐LINE WELDING: WITH OVER 90 KNOWN ROBOT PROGRAMMING SYSTEMS THE DEVELOPMENT OF OFF‐LINE PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES MUST TACKLE THE GENERAL PROBLEMS

Progress in machine building is connected with computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) development. An essential part of CIM is a computer aided design (CAD) system for off‐line creation of manufacturing control programs. Each technological process is characterised by special equipment and operations, which complicate development of CAD off‐line programming systems. More than 90 robot programming systems and languages are now in existence. However, programming all technological aspects into one single CAD system is not possible so far; besides, a teaching method being required, the programs contain many operators, and the database of CAD/CAM is not sufficiently used.