APT (programming language)

APT ( Automatically Programmed Tools) is an application-specific programming language for generating control information for machine tools.

APT was developed in the 1950s in the U.S. and coded in FORTRAN IV to describe complex manufacturing tasks for NC and CNC machines can be problem-oriented, eg at terminals in aircraft wings. APT allows primarily a processing geometry description, but has also experienced technological enhancements in many APT dialects.

One of the most famous extensions is EXAPT, " EXtended Subset of APT". The EXAPT Club was founded in the 1970s in Germany at the Universities of Stuttgart and Aachen with involvement of industrial companies such as EXAPT NC -Systemtechnik GmbH to develop the APT language.

An APT program (formerly called " cards") in sets described. A part program always starts with a set PARTNO and ends with a FINI set. A simple example for milling along a line:

PARTNO / EXAMPLE

APT sets have always been a main word up to six letters; In addition to the words, determining side information are separated with the slash " Slash ".

By changing the parameters of this simple line milling program is adaptable to all manufacturing tasks. Changes of the processing task ( for example, wire EDM, milling instead ), so only part of the technology needs to be changed; the geometry description of the workpiece remains unchanged.

APT has extensive targeting capabilities to describe editing tasks systematically, such as conditional and unconditional jumps, jump statements, loops, subroutines.

Pure APT can not be bought directly, but many commercially available CNC programming systems are APT- based.