Research on motion control automation of Stewart Platforms with industrial configurations (motion and controllers) is less present in the literature than other types of automation with low-cost devices such as Arduino, or via simulations in MATLAB or Simulink. Moreover, direct kinematics is less widely applied because of heavy calculation in real-time device implementations. The paper first analyzes the design, kinematic modelling, and trajectory generation of a Stewart Platform robot and addresses direct kinematics and motion automation. Next, the automation architecture with industrial controllers is detailed. The paper presents the results of the inverse kinematic in two use scenarios: cycloidal trajectories that carry out point-to-point and oceanic wave movements. The efficient calculation of direct kinematics in real time was also studied. This opens the possibility of closing the positioning loop at the controller or implementing supervisors such as the “tracking error”. Further research might investigate the effects of the sequence planning to avoid collisions with objects inside the workspace while considering the feedback of the tracking error.

This paper addresses manufacturing traceability requirements specification and the automation of manufacturing data collection. The proposed approach is to link traceability requirements to feature data to take advantage of features as the kernel technology for CAD/CAM integration. The paper proposes a solution based on nc_functions that automates and integrates manufacturing traceability for STEP compliant CAD, CAM and CNC systems. The paper presents the new nc_functions and a prototype implementation.

Plastic waste is a major concern for marine environment care, and many researchers and projects face the problem from different points of view. The European CircularSeas project aims to encourage the development of greener maritime industries through the combination of principles of Circular Economy, plastic recycling and 3D printing. However, while 3D printing has shown its benefits for conventional industry environments, the first issue discussed in this paper is whether 3D printing technology can also bring benefits to the maritime-port sector, where parts manufacturing, new prototyping trends and even product customization have not traditionally been major business issues. A secondary issue is how 3D printing and this specific user scenario could accommodate recycled plastic in a Circular Economy strategy in a feasible way. In an attempt to address both of these issues, the paper reviews some particularities of 3D printing open technologies and proposes a new integrated and user-oriented 3D printing framework, independent of hardware and adaptable to non-standard recycled plastic raw material from marine waste.

STEP-NC (Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data–Numerical Control) for metal milling and turning is not implemented by industrial computer numerical controllers. Solutions reported are prototypes based on post-processing in G-code. Moreover, minority machining processes, such as stone cutting, have not yet been contemplated in the STEP-NC standard. This article takes that sector as a use case. An extended STEP-NC model for circular saw stone-cutting operations is proposed, and a prototype automation implementation is developed to work with this extended model. This article shows how modern technological resources for coordinated axes control provided by many industrial controllers for the automation of general-purpose machines can speed up the processes of implementing STEP-NC numerical controllers. This article proposes a mixed and flexible approach for STEP-NC-based machine automation, where different strategies can coexist when it comes to executing STEP-NC machining files, so controllers do not need to implement the standard in an exhaustive way for all the possible features, but only at selected ones when convenient. This is demonstrated in a prototype implementation which is able to process STEP-NC product files with mixed-feature types: standard milling and non-standard sawblade features for stone processing.