Time synchronization of hierarchical real-time networked CNC system based on ethernet/internet

With the development of Ethernet/Internet, using Ethernet/Internet technology to implement the communication of computer numerical control (CNC) system is a new research field of networked CNC system. To support the synchronization control of the CNC system based on Ethernet/Internet, a time synchronization solution for the hierarchical real-time networked CNC system based on Ethernet/Internet is designed in this paper. To evaluate the performance, some experiments were conducted and the results were analyzed. The results show that the field level time synchronization based on the hard real-time Ethernet time synchronization protocol IEEE 1588 meets the requirement of the hard real-time tasks, and the time synchronization between the NC server and the NC core computer based on global positioning system (GPS) and network time protocol (NTP) also meets the requirement of the soft real-time tasks. The results testify that the time synchronization solution based on Ethernet/Internet for the CNC system is realizable.