Original Article

Proc IMechE Part B:

J Engineering Manufacture
1–9
A design of CNC architecture based on Ó IMechE 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0954405418774601
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Enming Hui, Bingyan Feng , Chenhan Lee, Jianzhong Yang

and Jihong Chen

Abstract
Performance, functionality, and cost determine the competitiveness of CNC systems. These factors often conflict with
each other. Cloud computing provides an enabling technology to meet the multidimensional challenges, potentially lead-
ing to CNC systems with both better performance and functionality, and lower cost. This article presents the architec-
ture of a cloud-computing-based CNC system. This system locates its frontend in a cloud virtual machine and provides
the frontend as a service. The frontend in cloud, otherwise known as a cloud-enabled frontend, remotely displays the
interactive interface at a client device. The application program for interaction on the client is lightweight compared with
the traditional CNC human machine interface and can be easily integrated into mobile devices, such as laptops. The
cloud-enabled frontend communicates with an NC device (also known as the backend) on the shop floor via the
Internet or an intranet. Only real-time tasks run on the backend, while other tasks (semi-real-time or non-real-time) are
executed on the cloud-enabled frontend. Thus, the computing ability and intelligence of CNC systems can be improved
by a switch to the cloud architecture. In the proposed solution, users can also launch third-party software (e.g. CAD,
CAM, and CAE) on the cloud-enabled frontend, making it more versatile due to a rich application environment.

Keywords
CNC system, cloud computing, virtualization, on-demand resources, interoperability

Date received: 3 May 2017; accepted: 16 March 2018

Introduction CNC systems have been further developed over the

Intelligent manufacturing is a core technology of the
new industrial revolution that includes the digitization,
networking, and intelligentization of the manufacturing
industry.1 It has gained significant momentum in indus-
try and academia in recent years.2 The Industrial
Internet in the United States, ‘‘Made in China 2025,’’
and ‘‘German Industry 4.0’’ all focus on intelligent man-
ufacturing and a deeper integration of information and
manufacturing technologies in order to advance the
next industrial revolution.1,3 Because machine tools are
the basic equipment in intelligent manufacturing, com-
puterized numerical control (CNC) technology plays a
crucial role in this process. At present, the major CNC
systems (e.g. HNC8, FANUC, and SIEMENS) adopt
the frontend and backend structure.4 The frontend
undertakes non-real-time or semi-real-time tasks, while
the backend executes real-time numerical control (NC)
machining. The two are located alongside a machine
tool and interact with each other via communication
bus (e.g. CAN, RS-485, or RS-232) or an intranet. To
increase productivity and manufacturing performance,
years to a point where they are quite powerful at pres-
ent. However, the current CNC system architecture is
not flexible enough to permit integration of intelligent
applications into CNC systems, posing an obstacle to
the development of intelligent manufacturing. That is,
performance, functions, and cost conflict with each
other in this model of CNC system architecture.
Virtualization technology offers a practical solution
for resolving the above conflict. It is responsible for
transforming heterogeneous manufacturing resources
into isomorphic services while manufacturing resources
are heterogeneous on storage format, description gran-
ularity, and management strategies.5 Virtualization
technology has been widely used in the field of
National NC System Engineering Research Center, Huazhong University
of Science & Technology, Wuhan, P.R. China
Corresponding author:
Jianzhong Yang, National NC System Engineering Research Center,
Huazhong University of Science & Technology, 430074 Wuhan, P.R. China.
Email: yangjz@hust.edu.cn
2 Proc IMechE Part B: J Engineering Manufacture 00(0)
computers, information security, and smart phones,
while being seldom used in manufacturing industry.6,7
DMG MORI CELOS provides a CAD-CAM VIEW
feature, allowing direct remote access to external CAD/
CAM workstations by means of remote desktop virtua-
lization.8 Operating on the same principle, FANUC
CNC systems can remotely use advanced applications
(e.g. CAD, CAM, and NCGuide) running on PCs.9
The above solutions provide CNC systems with better
versatility and usability. However, they are still imple-
mented using traditional frontend and backend model
with no support for remote monitoring and control of
NC machining. One purpose of this article is to present
an improved architecture to address the mentioned
deficiencies. The improved architecture can result in
CNC systems having better performance, functionality,
and flexibility due to the use of virtualization technol-
ogy, easing the integration of any intelligent application
(including remote monitoring and control) at a remote
site.
In this article, the virtualization layer is based on
cloud computing technology, which offers a scalable
and flexible service over the Internet or an intranet.10–12
According to the definition of National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST), cloud computing is
a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-
demand network access to a shared pool of configur-
able computing resources (e.g. networks, servers,
storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with minimal management
effort or service provider interaction.13,14 The key spirit
of the cloud computing concept can be summarized as
the ability to provide distributed, low-latency, on-
demand, and quantifiable services. As a result, cloud
computing creates new solutions and opportunities for
modern enterprises, including the manufacturing indus-
try.15 It can improve the environment of product
design, manufacturing process management, enterprise
resource planning, and manufacturing resource man-
agement by providing a globally optimized solution.14
Many studies, applying cloud computing in manu-
facturing, have been carried out. The key benefits of
manufacturing as a result of cloud computing technol-
ogy adoption are scalability to business size and needs,
ubiquitous network access, and virtualization.16 Y Shi17
proposed a cloud CNC system, consisting of a cloud
control node, a cloud measurement node, an adjust-
ment drive unit, a real-time communication network,
and access to the Internet. This system enabled coop-
erative manufacturing of multiple machine tools. The
cloud control node and the cloud measurement node
constitute a cloud layer, which in practice is merely a
cluster of PCs connected through a real-time physical
network. Hence, this CNC system retained the tradi-
tional frontend and backend model, suffering limita-
tions in providing on-demand computing, storage, and
network resources. Furthermore, it failed to lower man-
ufacturing costs by any sizable margin. Li et al.18,19 pro-
posed the concept of cloud manufacturing (CM), and
researched the architecture, as well as the operation and
application models of the CM system. However, the
above models were not integrated into a CNC system.
The CM system only provided services and applications
outside the CNC system.
This article will introduce an architecture of a cloud-
computing-based CNC system. This system moves the
software modules from traditional physical frontend to
the cloud, providing the frontend as a service (FAAS).
The cloud layer provides virtualized resources (e.g. the
virtual operating system, the virtual memory, and the
virtual hard disk space) to support the improved fron-
tend. There is a significant difference from how Y Shi
described his cloud CNC system: the improved fron-
tend in cloud (also referred to as a cloud-enabled fron-
tend) is launched using the virtualization technology.
The cloud-enabled frontend communicates with an NC
device (also referred to as the backend) via the Internet
or an intranet and displays its interactive interface at a
remote client device (also referred to as the client).
Furthermore, the backend undertakes only real-time
tasks such as servo control, while the cloud-enabled
frontend undertakes semi-real-time tasks (e.g. machin-
ing simulation) and non-real-time tasks (e.g. G-code
editing).20 Therefore, what this article proposes is a real
cloud CNC system, presenting improvements in com-
putation, interoperability, and on-demand provision of
resources.
The FAAS approach shows four main advantages.
First, it uses the cloud computing technology to provide
on-demand resources or services for the backend and
takes advantage of virtualization technology to improve
availability of cloud resources. Second, it is possible to
scale performance of a CNC system in response to a rise
in demand. For example, resource allocations, such as
that of virtual memory, can be varied dynamically.
Third, the cloud provides a richer environment, sup-
porting third-party software (e.g. CAD, CAM, and
CAE) and user-defined applications. These applications
are installed virtually on the cloud-enabled frontend.
Then, users can access, via the Internet or an intranet,
the cloud-enabled frontend and operate these applica-
tions to provide intelligent services for the backend.
Finally, the cloud layer utilizes high-end servers as
hardware carriers. They offer powerful computing
resources, including CPUs and storage, to the cloud-
enabled frontend.
Section ‘‘A cloud-computing-based CNC architec-
ture’’ focuses on the overall system architecture of the
cloud-computing-based CNC control approach. The
working mechanism of the cloud-enabled frontend and
the client is discussed. This section also considers how
the FAAS approach becomes advantageous in compu-
tation, interoperability, and provision of on-demand
resources. Section ‘‘The experiment’’ describes a
machining experiment designed to confirm that the
FAAS approach works in practice. The latency of this
system is also analyzed. The article concludes with sec-
tion ‘‘Conclusion and future work,’’ demonstrating the
Hui et al.
advantages of the proposed concept, as well as areas
needing in need of improvements.
A cloud-computing-based CNC
architecture
The FAAS approach separates the physical frontend
from a CNC device and deploys the software modules
in the cloud layer. The improved frontend is called the
cloud-enabled frontend in this article. That is, this
approach divides a proposed CNC system into the
cloud-enabled frontend, the client, and the backend, as
illustrated in Figure 1.
The backend, located in a workshop, mainly consists
of a servo controller, programmable logic controller
(PLC), an numerical control unit (NCU), and so on. It is
responsible for real-time tasks covering position control,
speed planning, interpolation arithmetic, and so on.21 The
operations of the machine-tool scram, pause, start-up,
and shutdown are all done at the backend. The cloud-
enabled frontend executes semi-real-time or non-real-time
tasks. Online NC machining simulation is an example of
a semi-real-time task, while non-real-time tasks include
G-code editing, troubleshooting, tool management, NC
parameter setting, commercial software (e.g. CAPP,
MES, CAD, CAM, and CAE), and so on. The client pro-
vides operators with an interactive interface. It could be
accessed on a PC, a laptop, or a smart phone.
A cloud-enabled frontend
A cloud-enabled frontend is a virtual machine (VM)
located in the cloud layer. The cloud layer is built with
high-performance servers. The cloud servers may be
located in a workshop, a factory, or far away from the
factory, because NC devices can interact with the cloud
via the Internet or an intranet. In addition, the cloud-
enabled frontend serves, via a network, its virtual desk-
top to thin client devices such as PCs, on which users
can run a variety of intelligent applications. Such appli-
cations are displayed similarly to appstores (Figure 2).
It is worth noting that there is a special application
named CNC-human machine interface (HMI), corre-
sponding to software functions and modules of a tradi-
tional frontend.
Using the just mentioned appstore, users can remove
or modify existing applications or install new ones;
however, such operations on CNC-HMI are not
allowed. This is because CNC-HMI has to be closely
coupled to the backend, while monitoring and control
of NC machining, such as G-Code editing and the con-
figuration of tool parameters, are performed remotely.
Figures 3 and 4 show the two corresponding kinds of
CNC-HMI interfaces.
In the proposed solution, the portability of CNC-
HMI influences the adaptability of the whole CNC
system. CNC-HMI is programmed with Qt, a cross-
platform application framework widely used to develop
3
Figure 1. The cloud-computing-based CNC system
architecture.
application software with a graphical user interface
(GUI).22,23 Qt enables developers to target, with a sin-
gle code base, various desktop, embedded and mobile
operating systems, as well as multiple screens.22
Therefore, Qt’s advantages such as the cross-platform
support and being intuitive ensure that the CNC-HMI
application is easily portable across platforms.
Launched in a VM, the cloud-enabled frontend can run
any operating system (e.g. Windows or Linux) from the
corresponding system image to provide the required
platform for CNC-HMI. The above strengths of CNC-
HMI and the cloud-enabled frontend make the cloud-
computing-based CNC system adaptable and flexible.
Along with software functions, the FAAS approach
provides storage as a service. Storage resources are
allocated at the cloud-enabled frontend as virtual hard
drives (VHD), which can be resized to increase their
capacity and partitioned. Machining data of NC
devices are uploaded to these VHDs, with users being
able to access the data from anywhere and at any time.
Separating machining data for a single backend is
necessary in order to keep control and production safe.
The FAAS approach achieves this goal by establishing
a one-to-one relationship between the cloud-enabled
frontend and the backend. Thus, the processing of a
single machine tool is kept relatively isolated from that
of others. Providers can optimize resource allocation at
the cloud-enabled frontend to meet a specific process-
ing demand.
The elasticity of cloud resources resolves the on-
demand resource allocation and computational issues
existing in traditional CNC systems. On one hand, the
cloud servers’ powerful software and hardware config-
urations (including CPUs, RAM, hard disks, etc.) can
be used to provide more capacity and computing power
to CNC systems. On the other hand, the virtual
4 Proc IMechE Part B: J Engineering Manufacture 00(0)

Figure 2. An interactive interface of the cloud-enabled frontend.

Figure 3. The interface used to edit the G-code.

resources of the cloud-enabled frontend can be demands. Once no longer needed, these resources will
expanded to meet the fluctuations in processing be reallocated to other uses.
Hui et al.
Figure 4. The interface used to set the tool parameters.
The proposed approach simplifies NC devices,
resulting in lower costs for machine tool providers. NC
devices do not need to perform complex computations,
because semi-real-time and non-real-time tasks are exe-
cuted in the cloud layer. As a result, they need less
memory and hard disk capacity. The cost of hard disk
drives (HDD) used in cloud servers is lower than the
cost of solid state drives (SSD) of the same capacity
used in a traditional frontend. It is possible that in the
future, NC devices might not include display units, as
the latter would be replaced by thin clients.
The client
The client communicates with the cloud layer using the
Remote Frame Buffer (RFB) protocol, a simple proto-
col for remote access to GUIs.24,25 Because it works at
the frame-buffer layer, it is applicable to all windowing
systems and applications, including X11, Windows,
and Macintosh. The RFB protocol can be used for
communications between the client and the cloud-
enabled frontend, regardless of the operating systems
they run. The remote endpoint where the user (i.e. the
display, the keyboard, and/or the pointing device) is
located is called the RFB viewer. The endpoint where
the changes to the frame-buffer originate (i.e. the win-
dowing system and applications) is known as the RFB
server. In the FAAS approach, the client includes an
integrated RFB viewer, called the cloud-enabled remote
desktop viewer (henceforth referred to as the C-RFB
5
viewer), while the cloud layer has an RFB server called
the cloud-enabled remote desktop server (henceforth
referred to as the C-RFB server).
In what follows, this article will describe how the
cloud-enabled frontend and the client communicate
with each other. The client requests access to the
required cloud-enabled frontend by providing the login
credentials (the IP address and the port of the server,
hosting the cloud-enabled frontend, and the password).
Then, the cloud-enabled frontend provides its desktop’s
pixel data to the client, where the remote virtual desk-
top (i.e. the virtual interactive interface) is shown to
users. Although the desktop resolution of the cloud-
enabled frontend is fixed at 1024 3 768, the virtual
interactive interface displays its output at the appropri-
ate scale, according to the client’s screen size. User
operations are received by the virtual interactive inter-
face, while their actual processing occurs in the cloud
layer.
A typical control flow of the FAAS approach is
described as follows (Figure 5):
1. A user inputs an instruction using an input device,
such as a keyboard or a mouse.
2. The client forwards the instruction to the cloud-
enabled frontend.
3. The cloud-enabled frontend produces the response
to the above instruction and generates a control
command (e.g. a servo control) for the backend.
6 Proc IMechE Part B: J Engineering Manufacture 00(0)

Figure 5. A typical control flow in FAAS approach.

4. Once the control command has been received, the

backend makes the corresponding movements and
sends its feedback to the cloud when necessary.
5. The cloud-enabled frontend provides the new desk-
top data to the client.
6. The client refreshes the screen seen to the user.
Powered by the C-RFB server, a cloud-enabled fron-
tend supports simultaneous access by multiple viewers,
whose interactive interfaces are synchronized. Hence,
there can be a one-to-many relationship between the
cloud-enabled frontend (or backend) and the client.
Developed in Qt, the C-RFB viewer is also cross-
platform and runs on all operating systems. It can run
on any display device, such as a PC or a laptop. As a
result, remote monitoring and control of NC machin-
ing are made possible. Compared to using a traditional
CNC display device, the operations are equivalent to
those on a traditional CNC system.
Additional features of the cloud-computing-based
CNC system
The cloud-computing-based CNC system also outper-
forms a traditional one in interoperability. It is capable
of integrating third-party software (e.g. CAPP, CAD/
CAM/CAE, PDM, PLM, and MES), as shown in
Figure 6. In the cloud application store, such software
can be installed or removed on demand. These pro-
grams can run well in the cloud and provide the corre-
sponding services. User-defined programs such as a
G-code simulator are also supported. This will reduce
Figure 6. A general solution to obtaining cloud services for
local NC devices.
the developers’ learning curve and encourage them to
concentrate on improving the performance of the CNC
system instead of working on lower layers of the system.
Therefore, the cloud-enabled frontend is not
intended merely for NC machining, but may also be
used for other purposes, such as G-code auto-program-
ming, CAD/CAM/CAE, and MES. This feature unifies
the scattered manufacturing processes because all
related actions can be performed at the client device,
resulting in a more efficient preparation for processing.
The experiment
This section illustrates a workpiece being machined by
the cloud-computing-based CNC system. The equip-
ment and the numerical control system used in this
experiment are described in Table 1.
The experiment was conducted in the Mechanical
Science and Engineering College of Huazhong
University of Science and Technology. The machine
tool was located in the ground-floor workshop, shown
in Figure 7. The cloud center, shown in Figure 8, con-
sisted of four Dell servers located on the fourth floor,
300 m (measured as a straight line distance) or so away
from the machine tool. Such a cloud center, configured
as described in Table 1, could serve at least 30 machine

Table 1. Description of equipment used in the experiment.

Equipment Description

Numerical control system HNC-848, a completely self-developed model of Wuhan Huazhong Numerical Control Co., LTD
Machine tool Five-axis CNC machining center (JT-GL8V) produced by J-Tech CNC Technology Co., LTD
Cloud center Each server has 100 GB of RAM, 2 CPUs and 10 TB of hard disk capacity
Cloud-enabled frontend A VM with 4 GB of RAM, 4 vCPUs and 40 GB of disk space
Workpiece Impeller
Hui et al.
Figure 7. The workpiece machining process.
Figure 8. The cloud center.
tools. The cloud-enabled frontend was a Windows 7
VM running on a single server. The client (a PC and an
iPad shown in Figure 9) was located in another room
on the same floor as the cloud center, approximately
100 m from the cloud center and approximately 400 m
from the machine tool.
In the workshop, experiment workers installed tools,
fixtures, the roughcast, and so on. After accessing the
cloud-enabled frontend from the client, the experiment
workers completed the G-code automatic programming
using Unigraphics NX (UG), the machining simulation
using VERICUT, the G-code optimization by a user-
defined optimization application, G-code editing with
CNC-HMI and, finally, commenced CNC machining,
as shown in Figure 7. Using an iPAD, the experiment
workers were able to monitor or control the machining
process over the network anytime and from anywhere.
The CNC system produced a defect-free impeller with-
out any warnings or error messages.
7
Figure 9. Interactive interfaces displayed on a computer and
an iPAD.
Due to communicating over the Internet or an intra-
net, command latency is a comparatively important
factor affecting the system performance. Developers
programmed a function in CNC-HMI to calculate the
response time for user commands. The experiment
workers typically require several kinds of data (includ-
ing axis, register, channel, and tool data) from a PC.
The results are shown in Table 2. For comparison, the
experiment workers performed another impeller
machining using a traditional CNC system with the
same CNC-HMI settings, the G-code, and the machine
tool. The results are also shown in Table 2.
As seen in Table 2, there are no apparent differences
in command latency between the cloud-computing-
based CNC system and the traditional one under the
network conditions that existed during the experiment.
8 Proc IMechE Part B: J Engineering Manufacture 00(0)
Table 2. The latency of CNC systems.
Latency (ms) Data type
Axis data
Cloud-computing-based \1
Traditional \1
In what follows, the reference bandwidth for the
proposed CNC system will be computed. Between for-
warding user commands from the client to the cloud-
enabled frontend and transmitting NC machining data
between the cloud layer and the backend, the largest
share of bandwidth is used to forward the pixel data
from the cloud-enabled frontend to the client. The larg-
est amount of pixel data in a single transmission is
1024 3 768 bytes. Generally, the client would reload
any changed regions, with the size of the pixel data
being below 1024 3 768 bytes. Therefore, the present
calculation only takes into account the maximum
1024 3 768 bytes of pixel data and takes the reload
time of the entire virtual interactive interface to be the
time needed for a single transmission. In the course of
10 tests on a PC, the values of 0.8, 1, 1.2, 0.8, 1.3, 1,
1.2, 0.7, 1, and 0.7 s have been obtained. Thus, the
average single transmission time (or AVE-TT) is 0.88 s,
according to the following equation (1)
0:8 s + 1 s + 1:2 s + 0:8 s + 1:3 s + 1 s + 1:2 s + 0:7 s + 1 s + 0:7 s
AVE  TT =
The conversion between bit and byte is shown in
equation (2)
8 bits = 1 byte ð2Þ
Let us use NS to denote the network speed in bps
(bits per second), and PD to denote the number of pix-
els in 1024 3 768 bytes of pixel data. Then, NS is cal-
culated according to equation (3)
PD
NS = 38 ð3Þ
AVE  TT
Substituting the respective values into equation (3),
NS is found to be approximately 7.15 3 106 bps.
Thus, cloud-computing-based CNC systems can
work well over network links providing 7.15 3 106 bps
or higher bandwidth. However, this is not the mini-
mum bandwidth requirement.
Conclusion and future work
A cloud-computing-based provision of a frontend for
machine tools eliminates the disadvantages of current
CNC systems in versatility, extensibility, and openness.
Because a cloud server can provide services for more
than one machine tool, the cloud platform can be cen-
trally maintained and administered by qualified staff.
Centralization would also considerably reduce the cost
Register data Channel data Tool data
1 1 \1
1 1 \1
of commissioning, maintenance, and operation of
machine tools. An amount of savings equal to that rea-
lized by moving the traditional physical frontend to the
cloud could also be expected for CNC systems as a
result of simplifying the hardware (e.g. reducing the
amount of memory and the hard drive space, and
removing the need for NC display devices) of current
CNC devices. Furthermore, the cloud layer provides a
richer environment for a variety of intelligent applica-
tions, as well as a powerful computing resource.
In conclusion, the FAAS approach yields a CNC
system with a higher flexibility, greater versatility, and
a higher computational power, yet a lower cost. In the
future, we intend to focus our efforts on generalizing
the proposed CNC system into the areas of education
and industry. In addition, we plan to research the appli-
cation of big data to raise the data-processing capacity
of this system.
= 0:88 s ð1Þ
10
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the help of Ping Wang and
Jie Wang.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest
with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following finan-
cial support for the research, authorship, and/or pub-
lication of this article: The National Key Technology
R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and
Technology of China (2012BAF17G01) and the
Development and Comprehensive Validation of an
Open High-grade CNC system, Servo Units and
Motor Products (2012ZX04001-012). The intercon-
nection protocol standard and verification of CNC
machine tools; The tool whole process life model
based on cutting data (Grant/Award No.: 51675204);
and The analysis method of three-dimensional chro-
matogram for CNC real-time data (Grant/Award
No.: 51575210).
Hui et al.
ORCID iD
Bingyan Feng https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3941-0747
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