Milling machine by APL

This paper de scribes how we used APL as a powerful programming language in the solution of a difficult problem. This problem was to reproduce a given solid S by means ofa milling machine ; this machine leaves some residurs on the surface of the reproduced solid and our final goal was to minimize th e cleaning up operations, necessary to obtain a perfect reproduction. The main difficulty we faced was the incompatibility between the movements of the cutter and the characteristics of S. APL proved to be an efficient tool for a fast design and validation of the solution algorithm. Furthermore the APL conversational features were very useful, since the user has to control the execution of the algorithm.