Nasantara Aircraft Industry
IOLAN+ in Control on the Factory Floor
"Indonesian engineering company, Nasantara Aircraft Industry (NAI), is using Perle IOLAN terminal servers as a facility to download NC files to its CNC machines".
The only aircraft industry company owned by the Indonesian government, Nasantara Aircraft Industry (NAI), is using Perle IOLAN+ terminal servers as a means to supply NC (Numerical Control) files to its CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines on the shop floor of its extensive manufacturing plant in Bandung, Indonesia.
The company designs and manufactures a 25-40 seater, propeller based passenger aircraft. Other NAI activities include helicopter assembly and manufacturing of spare parts for Boeing.
NAI has an IBM 3090 computer system which runs CAD/CAM and CATIA software. 3D drawing files from CATIA on the IBM system are downloaded to office-based SUN SPARC workstations running a software application called VERICAD. The software simulates a CNC machine in operation before it actually sends the NC tool path files to the CNC machines.
When the NC files have been fully simulated and approved they are downloaded via the Perle IOLAN+ serial ports, with the CNC machines being treated as printers on the network. NC files contain all of the information that the particular CNC machine (e.g. drilling machine, lathe, mil ling machine etc.) will need to machine a certain part or carry out a particular operation. In many cases, this can be carried out with little or no user intervention on the factory floor.
The Perle IOLAN+ Communications Servers and SUN workstations were provided to NAI through reseller PT Metrodata, a customer of Perle's Indonesian distribution partner PT Citrathirza Astarijaya, based in Jakarta.
