Forerunners of machine tools included bow drills and potter's wheels, which had existed in ancient Egypt prior to 2500 BC, and lathes, known to have existed in multiple regions of Europe since at least 1000 to 500 BC. But it was not until the later Middle Ages and the Age of Enlightenment that the modern concept of a machine tool—a class of machines used as tools in the making of metal parts, and incorporating machine-guided toolpath—began to evolve. Clockmakers of the Middle Ages and renaissance men such as Leonardo da Vinci helped expand humans' technological milieu toward the preconditions for industrial machine tools.
History
Machine tool
Machine tool | History
Forerunners of machine tools included bow drills and potter's wheels, which had existed in ancient Egypt prior to 2500 BC, and lathes, known to have existed in multiple regions of Europe since at least 1000 to 500 BC. Forerunners of machine tools included bow drills and potter's wheels, which had existed in ancient Egypt prior to 2500 BC, and lathes, known to have existed in multiple regions of Europe since at least 1000 to 500 BC but But it was not until the later Middle Ages and the Age of Enlightenment that the modern concept of a machine tool—a class of machines used as tools in the making of metal parts, and incorporating machine-guided toolpath—began to evolve Forerunners of machine tools included bow drills and potter's wheels, which had existed in ancient Egypt prior to 2500 BC, and lathes, known to have existed in multiple regions of Europe since at least 1000 to 500 BC Forerunners of machine tools included bow drills and potter's wheels, which had existed in ancient Egypt prior to 2500 BC, and lathes, known to have existed in multiple regions of Europe since at least 1000 to 500 BC
when was the first man made diamond made
user
1954
assistant
what are the materials required to make this?
user
Pure carbon, the belt press, the cubic press and the split-sphere (BARS) press.
assistant
what temperature-pressure conditions are required fopr this?
user
High pressure, high temperature.
assistant
can you mention any of its uses?
user
Machine tools and cutting tools; as a Thermal conductor; as an Optical material; semiconductors ; gemstones
assistant
what is the first one?
user
A machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformation
assistant
can you provide me the historical background for such tools?
user
Forerunners of machine tools included bow drills and potter's wheels, which had existed in ancient Egypt prior to 2500 BC, and lathes, known to have existed in multiple regions of Europe since at least 1000 to 500 BC. But it was not until the later Middle Ages and the Age of Enlightenment that the modern concept of a machine tool—a class of machines used as tools in the making of metal parts, and incorporating machine-guided toolpath—began to evolve. Clockmakers of the Middle Ages and renaissance men such as Leonardo da Vinci helped expand humans' technological milieu toward the preconditions for industrial machine tools.
Machine tool | History
The use of machine tools began with the onset of the First Industrial Revolution. The increase in mechanization required more metal parts, which were usually made of cast iron or wrought iron—and hand working lacked precision and was a slow and expensive process. One of the first machine tools was John Wilkinson's boring machine, that bored a precise hole in James Watt's first steam engine in 1774. Advances in the accuracy of machine tools can be traced to Henry Maudslay and refined by Joseph Whitworth. Standardization of screw threads began with Henry Maudslay around 1800, when the modern screw-cutting lathe made interchangeable V-thread machine screws a practical commodity.
Second Industrial Revolution | Machine tools
The technological development, however, did not immediately displace the older ways. Between 1900 and 1950, it was still not uncommon for a machinist to forge a tool from carbon tool steel.
Tool bit | History
During the 18th and 19th centuries, and even in many cases in the 20th, the builders of machine tools tended to be the same people who would then use them to produce the end products (manufactured goods). However, from these roots also evolved an industry of machine tool builders as we define them today, meaning people who specialize in building machine tools for sale to others. Historians of machine tools often focus on a handful of major industries that most spurred machine tool development. In order of historical emergence, they have been firearms (small arms and artillery); clocks; textile machinery; steam engines (stationary, marine, rail, and otherwise) (the story of how Watt's need for an accurate cylinder spurred Boulton's boring machine is discussed by Roe); sewing machines; bicycles; automobiles; and aircraft.
Machine tool | History
The original assignor was a firm called Maschinenfabrik Michael Kampf KG. A photo of this machine can be seen at Turati Lombardi's history page.
Guilloché | History
In the early 20th century, Joseph Wickham Roe wrote a seminal classic of machine tool history, "English and American Tool Builders" (1916), which is extensively cited by later works. About 20 years later Roe published a biography of James Hartness (1937) that also contains some general history of the industry. In 1947, Fred H. Colvin published a memoir, "Sixty Years with Men and Machines", that contains quite a bit of general history of the industry. L. T. C. Rolt's 1965 monograph, "A Short History of Machine Tools", is a widely read classic, as are the series of monographs that Robert S.
Machine tool builder | Historical studies of machine tool building
Many historians of technology consider that true machine tools were born when the toolpath first became guided by the machine itself in some way, at least to some extent, so that direct, freehand human guidance of the toolpath (with hands, feet, or mouth) was no longer the only guidance used in the cutting or forming process. In this view of the definition, the term, arising at a time when all tools up till then had been hand tools, simply provided a label for "tools that were machines instead of hand tools". Early lathes, those prior to the late medieval period, and modern woodworking lathes and potter's wheels may or may not fall under this definition, depending on how one views the headstock spindle itself; but the earliest historical records of a lathe with direct mechanical control "of the cutting tool's path" are of a screw-cutting lathe dating to about 1483.
Machine tool | Nomenclature and key concepts, interrelated
Most companies in countries as England, France and Germany kept making their own special tools and machines. Lintsen recalled that "only shortly before 1850, there is clear evidence of success in the effort to build 'machines with machines'. A number of so-called machine tools - lathes, planers, drills, cutters - gained the degree of accuracy needed to produce larger series of interchangeable parts. But even these standardization of parts did not mean the end of the individual craftsmanship in the machine industry." The first machine tools offered for sale (i.e., commercially available) were constructed by Matthew Murray in England around 1800.
Machine factory | History
Others could be included in this list as well, but they tend to be connected with the root causes already listed. For example, rolling-element bearings are an industry of themselves, but this industry's main drivers of development were the vehicles already listed—trains, bicycles, automobiles, and aircraft; and other industries, such as tractors, farm implements, and tanks, borrowed heavily from those same parent industries. Machine tools filled a need created by textile machinery during the Industrial Revolution in England in the middle to late 1700s. Until that time, machinery was made mostly from wood, often including gearing and shafts. The increase in mechanization required more metal parts, which were usually made of cast iron or wrought iron.
Machine tool | History
The tools were generally unreliable and ill-suited for precision work because of outdated design, low quality purchased components, substandard manufacturing facilities, and a lack of production-management expertise.
Technological and industrial history of China | Machine tools
The demand for metal parts led to the development of several machine tools. They have their origins in the tools developed in the 18th century by makers of clocks and watches and scientific instrument makers to enable them to batch-produce small mechanisms. Before the advent of machine tools, metal was worked manually using the basic hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws and chisels. Consequently, the use of metal machine parts was kept to a minimum. Hand methods of production were very laborious and costly and precision was difficult to achieve.
Industrial Revolution | Machine tools
It is clear that milling machines as a distinct class of machine tool (separate from lathes running rotary files) first appeared between 1814 and 1818. The centers of earliest development of true milling machines were two federal armories of the U.S. (Springfield and Harpers Ferry) together with the various private armories and inside contractors that shared turnover of skilled workmen with them. Between 1912 and 1916, Joseph W. Roe, a respected founding father of machine tool historians, credited Eli Whitney (one of the private arms makers mentioned above) with producing the first true milling machine. By 1918, he considered it "Probably the first milling machine ever built—certainly the oldest now in existence […]." However, subsequent scholars, including Robert S.
Milling (machining) | 1810s–1830s
There are no known archaeological finds of parts for these machines, but it is highly likely that due to the nature of the materials used that some material recycling took place at the time of their demise.
Springald | Introduction
Early planing ideas are known to have been underway in France in the 1750s. In the late 1810s, a variety of pioneers in various British shops (including James Fox, George Rennie, Matthew Murray, Joseph Clement, and Richard Roberts) developed the planer into what we today would call a machine tool. The exact details have been contentious and will probably never be known, because the development work being done in various shops was undocumented for various reasons (partially because of proprietary secrecy, and also simply because no one was taking down records for posterity). Roe (1916) provides a short chapter that tells the story as thoroughly as he was able to discover it.
Planer (metalworking) | History
The economic historians Roger Lloyd-Jones and Myrrdin Lewis have analysed the company's minute books to derive the following information on profits during the inter-war period: A further example of how innovatory the company could be is apparent in 1936, when it introduced the first electronics for control of precision grinding machines, this being a timing device.
The Churchill Machine Tool Company | Subsequent history: The Churchill Machine Tool Co
Each bit was forged with a hammer, quenched, and then ground with a grindstone. The exact details of the heat treatment and tip geometry were a matter of individual experience and preference. A substantial technological advance occurred in the 1890–1910 period, when Frederick Winslow Taylor applied scientific methods to the study of tool bits and their cutting performance (including their geometry, metallurgy, and heat treatment, and the resulting speeds and feeds, depths of cut, metal-removal rates, and tool life). Along with Maunsel White and various assistants, he developed high speed steels (whose properties come from both their alloying element mixtures and their heat treatment methods).
Tool bit | History
The machine tool industry began gradually in the early nineteenth century with individual toolmakers who innovated in machine tool design and building. The ones that history remembers best include Henry Maudslay, Joseph Whitworth, Joseph Clement, James Nasmyth, Matthew Murray, Elisha K. Root, Frederick W. Howe, Stephen Fitch, J.D. Alvord, Frederick W. Howe, Richard S. Lawrence, Henry D. Stone, Christopher M. Spencer, Amos Whitney, and Francis A. Pratt. The industry then grew into the earliest corporate builders such as Brown & Sharpe, the Warner & Swasey Company, and the original Pratt & Whitney company. In all of these cases, there were product manufacturers who started building machine tools to suit their own inhouse needs, and eventually found that machine tools had become product lines in their own right.
Machine tool builder | History
Among the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci is a sketch of a machine tool for the cutting of files (the chisel would make one strike, swaging a tooth, then automatically advance into position for the next tooth, and strike again).
File (tool) | History
An early instance of transition from skilled craftsmen to machine tools began in the late eighteenth century. In 1774, John Wilkinson invented a method for boring cannon barrels that were straight and true every time. He adapted this method to bore piston cylinders in the steam engines of James Watt. This boring machine has been called the first machine tool. Mass production using interchangeable parts was first achieved in 1803 by Marc Isambard Brunel in cooperation with Henry Maudslay, and Simon Goodrich, under the management of (with contributions by) Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham, the Inspector General of Naval Works at Portsmouth Block Mills at Portsmouth Dockyard, for the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic War.
Factory system | Machine tools and interchangeable parts
Machine tools, which cut, grind and shape metal parts, were another important mechanical innovation of the Industrial Revolution. Before machine tools it was prohibitively expensive to make precision parts, an essential requirement for many machines and interchangeable parts. Historically important machine tools are the screw-cutting lathe, milling machine and metal planer (metalworking), which all came into use between 1800 and 1840. However, around 1900, it was the combination of small electric motors, specialty steels and new cutting and grinding materials that allowed machine tools to mass-produce steel parts. Production of the Ford Model T required 32,000 machine tools. Modern manufacturing began around 1900 when machines, aided by electric, hydraulic and pneumatic power, began to replace hand methods in industry.
Productivity-improving technologies | Machine tools
Manufacture of ships' pulley blocks by all-metal machines at the Portsmouth Block Mills in 1803 instigated the age of sustained mass production. Machine tools used by engineers to manufacture parts began in the first decade of the century, notably by Richard Roberts and Joseph Whitworth. The development of interchangeable parts through what is now called the American system of manufacturing began in the firearms industry at the U.S Federal arsenals in the early 19th century, and became widely used by the end of the century.
History of technology | Industrial Revolution (1760–1830s)
His cutting experiments chewed through tons of workpiece material, consumed thousands of tool bits, and generated mountains of chips. They were sponsored in large part by William Sellers (a principal of Midvale Steel and Cramp's shipyard) and later by Bethlehem Steel. Not only did Taylor develop new materials to make single-point cutters from, but he also determined optimum geometry (rake angles, clearance angles, nose radiuses, etc.). He developed Taylor's Equation for Tool Life Expectancy. After Taylor, it was no longer taken for granted that the black art of individual craftsmen represented the highest level of metalworking technology. This was part of a larger trend during the 19th and 20th centuries by which science was mixed with art in the material culture of everyday life (applied science).
Tool bit | History
Roberts built a range of machine tools, some to his own design, the first being a gear-cutting machine. For accurately checking the dimensions of the gears he adapted the sector, which he developed for sale to other engineers. Roberts adopted rotary cutters, which he had seen used at Maudslays. This is one of the earliest records of a milling cutter used in engineering. In 1816 he made the first reliable wet gas meter. In 1817 he made a lathe able to turn work . This had a back gear to give an increased range of speeds, and a sliding saddle to move the tool along the work.
Richard Roberts (engineer) | Roberts' machine tools
Apart from the steam hammer, Nasmyth created several other important machine tools, including the shaper, an adaptation of the planer which is still used in tool and die making. Another innovation was a hydraulic press which used water pressure to force tight-fitting machine parts together. All of these machines became popular in manufacturing, and all are still in use in modified form. Nasmyth was also one of the first toolmakers to offer a standardised range of machine tools; before this, manufacturers constructed tools according to individual clients' specifications with little regard to standardisation, which caused compatibility problems. Nasmyth was arguably the last of the early pioneers of the machine tool industry.
James Nasmyth | Other inventions
In the period up to 1856, the foundry concentrated on building a large number of machine tools. Before Nasmyth, machine tools were custom built on demand. Nasmyth published a catalogue of standard designs which he then marketed. His design for the steam hammer was produced first in France by Le Creusot, another firm. On seeing it, Nasmyth then ensured that it was correctly patented. He produced a complete range of steam hammers, planers and shapers. He designed and produced pile drivers and a hydraulic press.
Nasmyth, Gaskell and Company | Machine tools
Tool bits have been used for centuries, yet their further technological development continues even today. Before about 1900, almost all tool bits were made by their users, and many machine shops had forges. In fact, good machinists were expected to have blacksmithing knowledge, and although the chemistry and physics of the heat treatment of steel were not well understood (as compared with today's sciences), the practical "art" of heat treatment was quite advanced, and something that most skilled metalworkers were comfortably acquainted with. Tool bits were made of carbon tool steels, which have high enough carbon content to take hardening well.
Tool bit | History
The hand axe, made by chipping flint to form a wedge, in the hands of a human transforms force and movement of the tool into a transverse splitting forces and movement of the workpiece. The hand axe is the first example of a wedge, the oldest of the six classic simple machines, from which most machines are based. The second oldest simple machine was the inclined plane (ramp), which has been used since prehistoric times to move heavy objects. The other four simple machines were invented in the ancient Near East. The wheel, along with the wheel and axle mechanism, was invented in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the 5th millennium BC.
Machine | History
The origins of the cylindrical grinder, as with all other modern machine tools, stem from the experimentation and invention of John Wilkinson and later Henry Maudslay who built the first horizontal boring machine and the first engine lathe, respectively. The cylindrical grinder owes much of its development from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, particularly to the advent of reliable, inexpensive steel production and later the improvement of the grinding wheel. The basis for the modern day cylindrical grinder was first built in the 1830s by two men working independently, Jonathan Bridges and James Wheaton . It is unclear as to which man had first produced the machine but both are closely tied to the first historical appearance of the modern day tool.
Cylindrical grinder | History
A "machine tool" is a machine which makes parts to other machines, such as screws or gun stocks, generally without a skilled craftsman doing the precision work. Instead, a machine operator controls the machine as it does the precision work. Lathes, milling machines, and drill presses are precision machine tools. The museum has the largest collection of historically significant machine tools in the United States. The museum's holdings include a collection of industrial machinery spanning the first one hundred years of precision manufacturing, along with fine examples of early machined products including rifles, sewing machines, and typewriters. Photographs and archival records provide additional resources for interpreting this critical phase of the Industrial Revolution.
American Precision Museum | Introduction
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Machine Project | History
In "Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation" (1984, 1st edition; 2011, 2nd edition) Noble recounts the history of machine tool automation in the United States. He argues that CNC (computerized numerical control) machines were introduced both to increase efficiency and to discipline unions which were stronger in the US in the period immediately following World War II. "Forces of Production" argues that management wanted to take the programming of machine tools, which as "machines for making machines" are a critical industrial product, out of the hands of union members and transfer their control, by means of primitive programming, to non-union, college-educated white-collar employees working physically separate from the shop floor.
David F. Noble | "Forces of Production"
Historically, metal was shaped by hand using a hammer. Later, larger hammers were constructed to press more metal at once, or to press thicker materials. Often a smith would employ a helper or apprentice to swing the hammer while the smith concentrated on positioning the work-piece. Drop hammers and trip hammers utilize a mechanism to lift the hammer, which then falls by gravity onto the work. In the mid 19th century, manual and rotary-cam hammers began to be replaced in industry by the steam hammer, which was first described in 1784 by James Watt, a Scottish inventor and Mechanical Engineer who also contributed to the earliest steam engines and condensers, but not built until 1840 by British Inventor James Nasmyth.
Machine press | History
Cast iron could be cast in molds for larger parts, such as engine cylinders and gears, but was difficult to work with a file and could not be hammered. Red hot wrought iron could be hammered into shapes. Room temperature wrought iron was worked with a file and chisel and could be made into gears and other complex parts; however, hand working lacked precision and was a slow and expensive process.
Machine tool | History
During the early-nineteenth century, cutting methods involved hand tools and cranks, which were often lengthy in duration. Joseph Whitworth changed this by creating the quick return mechanism in the mid-1800s. Using kinematics, he determined that the force and geometry of the rotating joint would affect the force and motion of the connected arm. From an engineering standpoint, the quick return mechanism impacted the technology of the Industrial Revolution by minimizing the duration of a full revolution, thus reducing the amount of time needed for a cut or press.
Quick return mechanism | History
The lever mechanism first appeared around 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where it was used in a simple balance scale, and to move large objects in ancient Egyptian technology. The lever was also used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC, and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC, and ancient Egypt during the Twelfth Dynasty (1991-1802 BC). The screw, the last of the simple machines to be invented, first appeared in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609) BC.
History of engineering | Ancient era
The first NC machines were built in the 1940s and 1950s, based on existing tools that were modified with motors that moved the tool or part to follow points fed into the system on punched tape. Those early servomechanisms were rapidly augmented with analog and digital computers, creating the modern CNC machine tools that have revolutionized machining processes.
Numerical control | History
However, the Greeks' understanding was limited to statics (the balance of forces) and did not include dynamics (the tradeoff between force and distance) or the concept of work.
Machine | History
It took another 40 years before further improvement and refinement of the tool occurred. The Brown & Sharpe company in Providence, RI was one of the first builders of the Willcox & Gibbs Sewing Machine, one of the first piece of precision machinery to be used in a residential setting. Joseph Brown believed that the shaft and needle bars of the sewing machine must be crafted from hardened tool steel. It was this desire that led to their experimentation with building a cylindrical grinder. The first attempt was simply a small lathe with a grinding wheel mounted to it. Subsequent attempts led to the cylindrical grinder displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition and the subsequent patent.
Cylindrical grinder | History
The lever was also used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC, and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC, and ancient Egypt during the Twelfth Dynasty (1991-1802 BC). The screw, the last of the simple machines to be invented, first appeared in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609) BC. The Egyptian pyramids were built using three of the six simple machines, the inclined plane, the wedge, and the lever, to create structures like the Great Pyramid of Giza.
History of mechanical engineering | Dawn of civilization to early Antiquity
The lever was used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC. and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC.
History of technology | Mesopotamia
Despite the existence of mills, the drawing of wire down to fine sizes continued to be done manually.
Wire | History
Brunel, a pioneering engineer, and Maudslay, a pioneer of machine tool technology who had developed the first industrially practical screw-cutting lathe in 1800 which standardized screw thread sizes for the first time which in turn allowed the application of interchangeable parts, collaborated on plans to manufacture block-making machinery. By 1805, the dockyard had been fully updated with the revolutionary, purpose-built machinery at a time when products were still built individually with different components. A total of 45 machines were required to perform 22 processes on the blocks, which could be made into one of three possible sizes. The machines were almost entirely made of metal thus improving their accuracy and durability.
Mass production | Industrial
They were rediscovered by Guillaume Amontons (1699) and were further developed by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1785).
Simple machine | History
Sufficient R&D spending probably would not have happened within the machine tool industry alone; but it was for the latter applications that the will and ability to spend was available. Once the development was underway, it was eagerly applied to machine tool control in one of the many post-WWII instances of technology transfer. In 1952, numerical control reached the developmental stage of laboratory reality. The first NC machine tool was a Cincinnati Hydrotel milling machine retrofitted with a scratch-built NC control unit. It was reported in "Scientific American", just as another groundbreaking milling machine, the Brown & Sharpe universal, had been in 1862.
Milling (machining) | 1940s–1970s
Around the middle of the 19th century, the latter words were coined as the concepts that they described evolved into widespread existence. Therefore, during the Machine Age, "machining" referred to (what we today might call) the "traditional" machining processes, such as turning, boring, drilling, milling, broaching, sawing, shaping, planing, reaming, and tapping. In these "traditional" or "conventional" machining processes, machine tools, such as lathes, milling machines, drill presses, or others, are used with a sharp cutting tool to remove material to achieve a desired geometry. Since the advent of new technologies in the post–World War II era, such as electrical discharge machining, electrochemical machining, electron beam machining, photochemical machining, and ultrasonic machining, the retronym "conventional machining" can be used to differentiate those classic technologies from the newer ones.
Machining | History and terminology
The precise meaning of the term "machining" has evolved over the past one and a half centuries as technology has advanced. In the 18th century, the word "machinist" simply meant a person who built or repaired machines. This person's work was done mostly by hand, using processes such as the carving of wood and the hand-forging and hand-filing of metal. At the time, millwrights and builders of new kinds of "engines" (meaning, more or less, machines of any kind), such as James Watt or John Wilkinson, would fit the definition. The noun "machine tool" and the verb "to machine" ("machined, machining") did not yet exist.
Machining | History and terminology
These two classes of machine tools simultaneously took the various classes of screws and moved them, for the first time, from the category of expensive, hand-made, seldom-used objects into the category of affordable, often-interchangeable commodity. (The interchangeability developed gradually, from intra-company to inter-company to national to international).
Automatic lathe | History
The lever mechanism first appeared around 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where it was used in a simple balance scale, and to move large objects in ancient Egyptian technology. The lever was also used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC, and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC, and ancient Egypt during the Twelfth Dynasty (1991-1802 BC). The screw, the last of the simple machines to be invented, first appeared in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609) BC.
Machine | History
Woodbury published during the 1960s, which were collected into a volume in 1972 as "Studies in the History of Machine Tools". In 1970, Wayne R. Moore wrote about the Moore family firm, the Moore Special Tool Company, who independently invented the jig borer (contemporaneously with its Swiss invention). Moore's monograph, "Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy", is a seminal classic of the principles of machine tool design and construction that yield the highest possible accuracy and precision in machine tools (second only to that of metrological machines). The Moore firm epitomized the art and science of the tool and die maker.
Machine tool builder | Historical studies of machine tool building
The development of machine tools and the system of interchangeable parts were the basis for the rise of the US as the world's leading industrial nation in the late 19th century. Oliver Evans invented an automated flour mill in the mid-1780s that used control mechanisms and conveyors so that no labour was needed from the time grain was loaded into the elevator buckets until flour was discharged into a wagon. This is considered to be the first modern materials handling system an important advance in the progress toward mass production.
Industrial Revolution | United States
According to one source, New Britain Machine was founded in New Britain, Connecticut in 1887. However, according to Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, it was founded in 1895 subsequent to the J.T. Case Engine Company, a manufacturer of steam engines. The first product the new company produced was a chainsaw mortising machine. In 1917, it registered the None Better trademark to sell its line of sockets and tools. Much of New Britain Machine's early tool production was done under the None Better line. Many of the early tools were carbon steel, offering a lower cost alternative to the higher price alloy steels of the day.
New Britain Machine Company | History
In addition, the emerging machine factories started making machines for production machines as textile machinery, compressors, agricultural machinery, and engines for ships.
Machine industry | History
The application of mechanical engineering can be seen in the archives of various ancient and medieval societies. The six classic simple machines were known in the ancient Near East. The wedge and the inclined plane (ramp) were known since prehistoric times. The wheel, along with the wheel and axle mechanism, was invented in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the 5th millennium BC. The lever mechanism first appeared around 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where it was used in a simple balance scale, and to move large objects in ancient Egyptian technology. The lever was also used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC.
Mechanical engineering | History
This was a big step because traditionally the machines were completely controlled manually. By the 1980s, there was starting to be small shops that had desktop computers and Computer Numerical Controlled cutting mills. This allowed users to rely solely on the computer and the programming of the software to run the machine.
Cutting mill | History
Machinery was developed to make nails ca. 1810. The Fourdrinier paper machine paper machine for continuous production of paper was patented in 1801, displacing the centuries-old hand method of making individual sheets of paper. One of the first mechanical devices used in agriculture was the seed drill invented by Jethro Tull around 1700. The seed drill allowed more uniform spacing of seed and planting depth than hand methods, increasing yields and saving valuable seed. In 1817, the first bicycle was invented and used in Germany. Mechanized agriculture greatly increased in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with horse drawn reapers and horse powered threshing machines.
Mechanization | Industrial revolution
First machine patent in America In 1646, Jenckes was granted the first machine patent in America. He received a 14-year patent for a new kind of water-driven machine to make scythes, sawmill saw blades, and other edged tools. In his application to the Massachusetts General Court, he asked for “the usuall priveleg and liberty Granted by the high Court of Parliament in England to men that doe first sett upon workes of this nature”. He explained that he had “expended his estate, study, and labour, and have brought things to perfection; Another when he seeth it makes the like; and soe I loose the benefit of that I have studied for many yeeres before; which will tend to my Great damadg if not my utter undoeing”.
Joseph Jenckes Sr. | Career highlights
In 1841, Joseph Whitworth created a design that, through its adoption by many British railroad companies, became the world's first national machine tool standard called British Standard Whitworth. During the 1840s through 1860s, this standard was often used in the United States and Canada as well, in addition to myriad intra- and inter-company standards. The importance of machine tools to mass production is shown by the fact that production of the Ford Model T used 32,000 machine tools, most of which were powered by electricity. Henry Ford is quoted as saying that mass production would not have been possible without electricity because it allowed placement of machine tools and other equipment in the order of the work flow.
Second Industrial Revolution | Machine tools
However, it was not until 1760–1800 that these various elements were brought together successfully to create (in contemporaneous parallel) two new types of machine tool: the screw-cutting lathe (for low-volume, toolroom-style production of "machine" screws, with easy selection of various pitches) and the first high-volume-production, specialized, single-purpose machine tools for the production of screws, which were created to produce "wood" screws [meaning screws made of metal for use in wood] at high volume and low unit price. Screw-cutting lathes fed into the just-dawning evolution of modern machine shop practice, whereas the wood-screw-making machines fed into the just-dawning evolution of the modern hardware industry, that is, the concept of one factory supplying the needs of thousands of customers, who consumed screws in growing quantities for carpentry, cabinet making, and other trades, but did not make the hardware themselves (purchasing it instead from capital-intensive specialist makers for lower unit cost than they could achieve on their own).
Automatic lathe | History
Others, such as Henry Maudslay, James Nasmyth, and Joseph Whitworth, soon followed the path of expanding their entrepreneurship from manufactured end products and millwright work into the realm of building machine tools for sale. in the 1830s James Nasmyth had "somewhat to his surprise... discovered, that there was really a market emerging for readymade lathes, planers, drills and flat banks. That demand partly originated from the people building the Lancashire textile machinery, and partly from the new phenomenon: the railways. The fast-growing rail network had locomotives, equipped repair shops, tracks and more demands."
Machine factory | History
Battison's article "Eli Whitney and the Milling Machine," which was published in the "Smithsonian Journal of History" in 1966, exemplifies the dispelling of the "Great Man" image of Whitney by historians of technology working in the 1950s and 1960s. He quotes Battison as concluding that "There is no evidence that Whitney developed or used a true milling machine." Baida says, "The so-called Whitney machine of 1818 seems actually to have been made after Whitney's death in 1825." Baida cites Battison's suggestion that the first true milling machine was made not by Whitney, but by Robert Johnson of Middletown. The late teens of the 19th century were a pivotal time in the history of machine tools, as the period of 1814 to 1818 is also the period during which several contemporary pioneers (Fox, Murray, and Roberts) were developing the planer, and as with the milling machine, the work being done in various shops was undocumented for various reasons (partially because of proprietary secrecy, and also simply because no one was taking down records for posterity).
Milling (machining) | 1810s–1830s
The Journal was founded in 1960 in order to publish papers presented at and stimulated by the spin-off interest arising from the annual "International Machine Tool Design & Research Conferences", held alternatively at the University of Birmingham and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. Originally, it was titled, "International Journal of Machine Tool Design and Research". Professor S.A. Tobias , as expert in machine tool dynamics at the University of Birmingham, was the founder of the journal and its first Editor-in-Chief. Professor T.A. Dean, an expert in metal forming processes, at the University of Birmingham, took over this Journal in 1986, when Professor S.A.Tobias died.
International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture | History
The history of milling cutters is intimately bound up with that of milling machines. Milling evolved from rotary filing, so there is a continuum of development between the earliest milling cutters known, such as that of Jacques de Vaucanson from about the 1760s or 1770s, through the cutters of the milling pioneers of the 1810s through 1850s (Whitney, North, Johnson, Nasmyth, and others), to the cutters developed by Joseph R. Brown of Brown & Sharpe in the 1860s, which were regarded as a break from the past for their large step forward in tooth coarseness and for the geometry that could take successive sharpenings without losing the clearance (rake, side rake, and so on).
Milling cutter | History
At its full maturity in the mid 20th century, the machine tool industry provided the backbone of American industrial strength and helped the United States develop into a world power.
American Precision Museum | Windsor, Vermont and Precision Manufacturing
The idea of incorporating several tools in one unit is very old, dating back at least as far as Middle Roman times. Many of these were used for eating.
Multi-tool | Historical
The machines, weighing about half a tonne, marked the height of mechanical computation; they were first used in the Spanish Civil War and extensively during World War II. They performed in real-time and were capable of predicting the firing angle to explode a shell within 10 meters of a plane at anything up to 10,000 meters.
Allan G. Bromley | Collections
For the machinery industry this brought all sorts of new work with new machinery for metallurgy, machine tool for metalworking, production of steam engines for trains with all its necessities etc. In time the market for the machine industry became wider, specialized products were manufactured for a greater national and often international market. For example, it was not uncommon in the second half of the 19th century that American steelmakers ordered their production in England, where new steelmaking techniques were more advanced. In the far east Japan would import these product until the early 1930s, the creation of an own machinery industry got underway.
Machine industry | 19th century
The machinery factories came into existence in the course of the Industrial Revolution. Late 18th century most production machines, were still made of wood and manufactured in local workshops. The first industrial factories, such as cotton mills and cotton weavers, started their own workshops, where clockmakers, instrument makers, joiners and cabinet makers were employed to build and maintain the production machines. In the first half of the 19th century gradually the wooden machinery got replaced by metal machine. The machine building gradually broke loose from the textile industry and independent companies emerged specializing in textile machinery, machine tools, locomotives, large steam engines, etc.
Machine factory | History
The very first machines were designed by growers and build by small engineering/fabrication workshops usually under the careful guidance and supervision of the farmer. Each machine for many years was generally similar to the last with the occasional modification to improve performance.
Plastic mulch | History
Further development early in the 19th century in England, Germany and Scotland of machine tools and cheaper methods for the production of steel, such as the Bessemer steel, triggered the Second Industrial Revolution, which culminated in early factory electrification, mass production and the production line. The machine shop emerged as Burghardt called, a "place in which metal parts are cut to the size required and put together to form mechanical units or machines, the machines so made to be used directly or indirectly in the production of the necessities and luxuries of civilization." The rise of machine shops and their specific manufacturing and organizational problems triggered the early job shop management pioneers, whose theories became known as scientific management.
Machine shop | 19th century
Pre-industrial machinery was built by various craftsmenmillwrights built water and windmills, carpenters made wooden framing, and smiths and turners made metal parts. Wooden components had the disadvantage of changing dimensions with temperature and humidity, and the various joints tended to rack (work loose) over time. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, machines with metal parts and frames became more common. Other important uses of metal parts were in firearms and threaded fasteners, such as machine screws, bolts and nuts. There was also the need for precision in making parts. Precision would allow better working machinery, interchangeability of parts and standardization of threaded fasteners.
Industrial Revolution | Machine tools
North eventually made progress toward some degree of interchangeability and developed special machinery. North's shop used the first known milling machine (), a fundamental machine tool.
Economic history of the United States | Development of interchangeable parts
The Newcomen steam engine was first used, to pump water from a mine, in 1712. John Smeaton introduced metal gears and axles to water wheels in the mid to last half of the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution started mainly with textile machinery, such as the spinning jenny (1764) and water frame (1768). Demand for metal parts used in textile machinery led to the invention of many machine tools in the late 1700s until the mid-1800s. After the early decades of the 19th century, iron increasingly replaced wood in gearing and shafts in textile machinery. In the 1840s "self acting" machine tools were developed.
Mechanization | Industrial revolution
The first uses of iron alloys such as steel dates to around 1800 BCE.
Technology | Metal tools
Samuel Bentham developed a shaper between 1791 and 1793. However, Roe (1916) credits James Nasmyth with the invention of the shaper in 1836. Shapers were very common in industrial production from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th. In current industrial practice, shapers have been largely superseded by other machine tools (especially of the CNC type), including milling machines, grinding machines, and broaching machines. But the basic function of a shaper is still sound; tooling for them is minimal and very cheap to reproduce; and they are simple and robust in construction, making their repair and upkeep easily achievable. Thus they are still popular in many machine shops, from jobbing shops or repair shops to tool and die shops, where only one or a few pieces are required to be produced and the alternative methods are cost- or tooling-intensive.
Shaper | History
In 1923, the Frenchman Jean Claude de Valière tried making a tool that could make holes in metal by friction heat, instead of by machining. It was only a moderate success, because at that time the right materials were not yet available. Moreover, he hadn't yet discovered the right shape for this kind of tool. It was not until the 1980s that a useful tool could be produced.
Friction drilling | History
The points and sides of their tools indicate a "Moustero-Levalloisian" element. They seemed to have a masterful knowledge of Upper Palaeolithic technology, producing blades as much as fifteen centimeters long.
Ordos Plateau | History
Before long, the machines could automatically change the specific cutting and shaping tools that were being used. For example, a drill machine might contain a magazine with a variety of drill bits for producing holes of various sizes. Previously, either machine operators would usually have to manually change the bit or move the work piece to another station to perform these different operations. The next logical step was to combine several different machine tools together, all under computer control. These are known as machining centers, and have dramatically changed the way parts are made.
Machine tool | Automatic control
Later he developed the shaping machine, where the cutting tool was reciprocated horizontally over the work, which could be moved in all directions by means of screw-driven slides. Examples of his machine tools, including the oldest existing metal planer, are in the collections of the National Museum of Science and Industry, London. Roberts also manufactured and sold sets of stocks and dies to his range of pitches, so other engineers could cut threads on nuts and bolts and other machine parts. Roberts' inventions had a seminal influence on other machine-tool engineers, including Joseph Whitworth, when he came to Manchester, a decade later.
Richard Roberts (engineer) | Roberts' machine tools
“all the turning of the iron for the cotton machinery built by Mr. Slater was done with hand chisels or tools in lathes turned by cranks with hand power”. David Wilkinson Machine tools can be powered from a variety of sources. Human and animal power (via cranks, treadles, treadmills, or treadwheels) were used in the past, as was water power (via water wheel); however, following the development of high-pressure steam engines in the mid 19th century, factories increasingly used steam power. Factories also used hydraulic and pneumatic power. Many small workshops continued to use water, human and animal power until electrification after 1900.
Machine tool | Drive power sources
They produced and test marketed a line of hand tools branded with their own name.
Western Forge | History
Hall's cutting machines were designed for simplicity, to the point that “activity [was] more necessary than judgment” and young boys or “common hands” could successfully run them. They both “functioned without any manual guidance but evidently ceased operation once the workpiece had been finished,” allowing the worker to operate several at once. Hall himself even claimed “one boy by the aid of these machines can perform more work than ten men with files, in the same time, and with greater accuracy”. Hall's innovations in construction, tools, controls, stops, and gauges all were advances in milling iron and machine tools. Together with Simeon North and other armorers, Hall contributed to the adoption of interchangeable parts and the American System as a whole.
John H. Hall (gunsmith) | Legacy
The addition of a handle gave the user better control and less accidents. The hammer became the number one tool. Used for building, food and protection. The hammer's archaeological record shows that it may be the oldest tool for which definite evidence exists of its early existence.
Hammer | History
The idea that a machine can be decomposed into simple movable elements led Archimedes to define the lever, pulley and screw as simple machines. By the time of the Renaissance this list increased to include the wheel and axle, wedge and inclined plane. The modern approach to characterizing machines focusses on the components that allow movement, known as joints. Wedge (hand axe): Perhaps the first example of a device designed to manage power is the hand axe, also called biface and Olorgesailie. A hand axe is made by chipping stone, generally flint, to form a bifacial edge, or wedge. A wedge is a simple machine that transforms lateral force and movement of the tool into a transverse splitting force and movement of the workpiece.
Machine | Simple machines
Since these were obsolete machines, they were all scrapped by 1910.
FS Class 103 | History
Brown & Sharpe was instrumental in the development of machine tools and machining technology (including toolmaking, metrology, production, etc.). It was responsible for the improvement and wider dissemination of milling machines, micrometers, turret lathes, screw machines, and other tools. A thorough account of the details is given in a seminal classic of machine tool history, Joseph W. Roe's "English and American Tool Builders" (1916).
Brown &amp; Sharpe | Growth and expansion
Mandrels are not recent inventions. Metal machining utilizing the spinning process has been recorded as far back as ancient Egyptian times. In metal spinning, a wood or metal spinning mandrel is used, the form of which corresponds with the internal contour of the part to be produced. This method securely clamps the raw material and allows for accurate machining into the desired final form. Since the material is clamped internally, there is no interference to the operator from the lathe/mandrel assembly during production. Also, the traversing mandrel was introduced around 1700, and instantiated the design of a lathe mandrel able to slide axially in its bearings under the control of the operator, so that components having short lengths of thread could be produced, such as screws.
Mandrel | History
The direct ancestor of today's stenotype was created by Ward Stone Ireland in about 1913, and the word "stenotype" was applied to his machine and its descendants sometime thereafter.
Stenotype | History
1070–1125) who records applying the device in several of his machines.
Flywheel | History
Stellite soon joined high speed steels as a material for single-point cutters. Although diamond turning had been around for a long time, it was not until these new, expensive metals came about that the idea of cutting inserts became commonly applied in machining. Before this, most single-point cutters were forged entirely of tool steel (then ground at the tip). Now it became more common to attach a separate tip (of one material) to a holder (of another). With the development of commercially available cemented carbide (1920s) and ceramic inserts (post-WWII), this trend accelerated, because carbide and ceramic are even more expensive and even less suited to serving as a shank.
Tool bit | History
A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformation. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All machine tools have some means of constraining the workpiece and provide a guided movement of the parts of the machine. Thus the relative movement between the workpiece and the cutting tool (which is called the toolpath) is controlled or constrained by the machine to at least some extent, rather than being entirely "offhand" or "freehand". It is a power driven metal cutting machine which assists in managing the needed relative motion between cutting tool and the job that changes the size and shape of the job material.
Machine tool | Introduction
"These attacks on machines did not imply any necessary hostility to machinery as such; machinery was just a conveniently exposed target against which an attack could be made." An agricultural variant of Luddism occurred during the widespread Swing Riots of 1830 in southern and eastern England, centering on breaking threshing machines.
Luddite | Historical precedents
Machine tools of the "automatic" variety, which in the pre-computer era meant mechanically automated, had already reached a highly advanced state by World War I.
Turret lathe | Automatic
One barrier to complete automation was the required tolerances of the machining process, which are routinely on the order of thousandths of an inch. Although connecting some sort of control to a storage device like punched cards was easy, ensuring that the controls were moved to the correct position with the required accuracy was another issue. The movement of the tool resulted in varying forces on the controls that would mean a linear input would not result in linear tool motion. In other words, a control such as that of the Jacquard loom could not work on machine tools because its movements were not strong enough; the metal being cut "fought back" against it with more force than the control could properly counteract.
History of numerical control | Servos and synchros
Lathes have been around since ancient times. Adapting them to screw-cutting is an obvious choice, but the problem of how to guide the cutting tool through the correct path was an obstacle for many centuries. Not until the late Middle Ages and early modern period did breakthroughs occur in this area; the earliest of which evidence exists today happened in the 15th century and is documented in the "". It incorporates slide rests and a leadscrew. Roughly contemporarily, Leonardo da Vinci drew sketches showing various screw-cutting lathes and machines, one with two leadscrews. Leonardo also shows change-gears in some of these sketches.
Screw-cutting lathe | Earliest lathes with machine-guided toolpath for screw-cutting
The first machine shops started to appear in the 19th century when the Industrial Revolution was already long underway. Before the industrial revolution parts and tools were produced in workshops in local villages and cities on small-scale often for a local market. The first machinery that made possible the Industrial Revolution were also developed in similar workshops. The production machines in the first factories were built on site, where every part was still individually made to fit. After some time those factories started their own workshops, where parts of the existing machinery were repaired or modified. In those days textiles were the dominant industry, and these industries started to further develop their own machine tools.
Machine shop | Until the 19th century
Some of the key men in milling machine development during this era included Frederick W. Howe, Francis A. Pratt, Elisha K. Root, and others. (These same men during the same era were also busy developing the state of the art in turret lathes. Howe's experience at Gay & Silver in the 1840s acquainted him with early versions of both machine tools. His machine tool designs were later built at Robbins & Lawrence, the Providence Tool Company, and Brown & Sharpe.) The most successful milling machine design to emerge during this era was the , which rather than being a specific make and model of machine tool is truly a family of tools built by various companies on a common configuration over several decades.
Milling (machining) | 1840s–1860
Various machine elements that potentially lent themselves to screw making (such as the lathe, the leadscrew, the slide rest, gears, slide rests geared direct to spindles, and "change gear" gear trains) were developed over the centuries, with some of those elements being quite ancient. Various sparks of inventive power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance combined some of these elements into screw-making machines that presaged the industrial era to follow. For example, various medieval inventors whose names are lost to history clearly worked on the problem, as shown by Wolfegg Castle's "Medieval Housebook" (written circa 1475–1490), and Leonardo da Vinci and Jacques Besson left us with drawings of screw-cutting machines from the 1500s; not all of these designs are known to have been built, but clearly similar machines were a reality during Besson's lifetime.
Automatic lathe | History
In his first machine, he supported the harness by knotted cords, which he elevated by a single trap board.
Jacquard machine | History
Early tool sets consisted of hex drive sockets and an ell bar for the drive tool. Beginning in the 1930s, the None Better line consisted of a wide variety of 1/2 square drive tools with a Cadmium finish. At this time, New Britain Machine was also supplying tools for Sears in their Craftsman line of tools. These tools are easy to distinguish as they either have a BE or an H in a circle stamped into the tools. The New Britain Machine line was also created at this time as a higher priced alloy steel alternative.
New Britain Machine Company | History
1942: The company begins as a small production unit for cemented carbide tools in Sandviken, Sweden when Wilhelm Haglund is assigned the job as manager of the unit. However, new innovations and manufacturing methods lead to the establishment of a more industrialized unit in Gimo, Sweden, in 1951. 1957: Scrapers become the first product with mechanically clamped “indexable inserts” or “throw-away inserts”, as they were called at the time. The birth of the T-Max holder and use of indexable inserts is the start of a big change in the practice and productivity in machining. 1969: Heat-resistant Gamma Coating, or GC, is introduced as a grade, revolutionizing turning, milling and drilling with previously unmatched metal cutting performance.
Sandvik Coromant | History in brief