  In several fields like aeronautics, die and automotive, the machining of the
parts is done more and more on high speed machines tools. Today, the offer for
purchasing these machine tools is very wide. This situation poses the problem
of the judicious and objective choice meeting industrial needs that must be
necessary well expressed. The choice remains difficult insofar as the technical
data provided to the customers by the manufacturers of machine tools are
insufficient as well quantitatively as qualitatively. In this paper we present
a protocol for the characterization of machines tools in order to direct the
choice. The protocol is based on the one hand on no-load complementary tests to
those recommended by the standards ISO 230 and ISO 10791 and on the other hand
on the tests in load on a part test. In the first part, we present the
industrial needs as well as an analysis of the technical data of machine tools.
The second part is devoted to the study of the standards, the description of
the protocol and the presentation of the results.
