Abstract:

Simulation is one of the possible ways to model the behaviour of different systems. Various systems can be encountered in almost all fields of human activity such as in physics and other natural sciences, technology, economics, sociology, and other fields. If we are interested in the time evolution of a system and we can’t or don’t want to study the real system, we create a model that appropriately describes the real system under the conditions we specify. In technical practice, a large number of computer programs are available which allow the simulation of processes taking place in different systems.

In this paper, we present the results of a research aimed at investigating the benefits of using simulation in the development of a computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine program by a comparative experiment using the parallel group method. The persons involved were students in their second to fourth year of technical vocational schools. The experiment was conducted during a regular class of CNC milling machine programming using the manual programming method. Only one group of students was provided with a programming simulator during the programming process. The errors in the students’ programs were evaluated during the milling process and then statistically processed. In most cases, better results were achieved with programs created with the support of the program simulation.

Keywords:

Simulation, teaching, programming, CNC milling machine.