It is Possible a CNC Machine be Operated Remotely?

Of course they can be remotely operated and have been for years. In the 90's I wrote the documentation for and trained the operators and trades people on the operation and maintenance of an engine block machining line. It consisted of 5 cells, each cell had between five and twenty 5 axis machining centers linked by pallet conveyors.

The ideal operation was that an operator loaded raw engine block castings onto custom designed pallets and placed it at the in-feed end of the conveyor, and another operator removed the finished block, which was finish machined and actually had main bearing caps installed, at the end of the line.

The only intervention was if the line detected a problem and shut itself down. The machines would even notify the operators when they needed to replace worn down tools in the tool changers. Depending on the type of operation performed there were multiple replacement tools in each tool changer and only needed attention when the machine was using its last tool.

Also each block had an RFID chip epoxied in a recess. The chip recorded the success or failure of each operation and other data that could be downloaded and statistically analyzed as each block came off the line, or even between cells.

If you're looking into operating a single CNC machine remotely you will probably want to include material handling robot(s) and a logic system to control your process and allow it to cycle as long as there is material available to feed it. The logic system must include a tool monitoring system to replace tools at a specified wear point (usually determined by the increase in horsepower required to perform that tool's operation) and to shut down the operation if a tool breaks. Never allow a machine to operate without a human or a proven system to shut it down in the event there are tooling problems. Tools are cheap, machines are expensive.

Good luck.