About Control Emulator

Control Emulator CERUN is a computer numerical control (CNC) machine emulator, used by the computer aided manufacturing (CAM) system numerical control (NC) programmer to verify the correctness of machine control data (MCD), also known as NC programs or G-Code, before running the MCD on the actual CNC machine. Control Emulator is a software application that simulates the behavior of the CNC machine, by processing the MCD in the same way that the actual CNC machine does.

The core objective of Control Emulator is to determine the correctness of the MCD, primarily as it relates to the movement of machine axes, with the goal being to predict if running the MCD will cause damage to the machine, workpiece or tooling. It does this by simulating the MCD in a virtual environment, testing for collisions between the machine components (e.g., tooling, table, head) and the part being manufactured (e.g., fixtures, clamps, workpiece). It also performs other validation, such as axis limit checking.

Control Emulator includes a powerful, yet easy to use macro language that allows you to completely customize your control emulators to support unusual CNC control and machine tool features.

Types of Machines Supported

Control Emulator provides built-in support of the following CNC machine axis types:

  • Primary linear axes ( X Y Z )

  • Secondary co-linear axes ( U V W )

  • Head rotary axes to orient the tool ( A B C )

  • Table rotary axes to orient the workpiece ( A' B' C' )

  • Any Extending axis or quill ( E )

  • Any exchangeable head including nutating ( N N' )

Control Emulator supports the following machine types:

  • Milling machines and machining centers (5 axes and up — all combinations of linear and rotary axes)

  • Lathes (2 and 4 axes) and merging lathes (4 axes), with optional sub-spindle

  • Mill-Turn centers (XZC), with additional Y axis, rotary heads and/or tables, merging turrets, and optional sub-spindle

  • Lasers, flame cutters and profilers

  • Robots (6 revolute axes)

  • Composite or Hybrid machining centers, which can combine the capabilities of multiple machining technologies and are supported by combining the capabilities of multiple control emulators.