Machine tool | Description, History, Types, & Facts

Modern machine tools cut or form parts to tolerances of plus or minus one ten-thousandth of an inch (0.0025 millimetre). In special applications, precision lapping machines can produce parts that are within plus or minus two millionths of an inch (0.00005 millimetre). Because of the precise dimensional requirements of the parts and the heavy cutting forces exerted on the cutting tool , machine tools combine weight and rigidity with delicate accuracy.

Machine tools that form parts by removing metal chips from a workpiece include lathes, shapers and planers, drilling machines, milling machines, grinders, and power saws. The cold forming of metal parts, such as cooking utensils, automobile bodies, and similar items, is done on punch presses, while the hot forming of white-hot blanks into appropriately shaped dies is done on forging presses.

machine tool , any stationary power-driven machine that is used to shape or form parts made of metal or other materials. The shaping is accomplished in four general ways: (1) by cutting excess material in the form of chips from the part; (2) by shearing the material; (3) by squeezing metallic parts to the desired shape; and (4) by applying electricity, ultrasound, or corrosive chemicals to the material. The fourth category covers modern machine tools and processes for machining ultrahard metals not machinable by older methods.

History

Before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, hand tools were used to cut and shape materials for the production of goods such as cooking utensils, wagons, ships, furniture, and other products. After the advent of the steam engine, material goods were produced by power-driven machines that could only be manufactured by machine tools. Machine tools (capable of producing dimensionally accurate parts in large quantities) and jigs and fixtures (for holding the work and guiding the tool) were the indispensable innovations that made mass production and interchangeable parts realities in the 19th century.

The earliest steam engines suffered from the imprecision of early machine tools, and the large cast cylinders of the engines often were bored inaccurately by machines powered by waterwheels and originally designed to bore cannon. Within 50 years of the first steam engines, the basic machine tools, with all the fundamental features required for machining heavy metal parts, were designed and developed. Some of them were adaptations of earlier woodworking machines; the metal lathe derived from woodcutting lathes used in France as early as the 16th century. In 1775 John Wilkinson of England built a precision machine for boring engine cylinders. In 1797 Henry Maudslay, also of England and one of the great inventive geniuses of his day, designed and built a screw-cutting engine lathe. The outstanding feature of Maudslay’s lathe was a lead screw for driving the carriage. Geared to the spindle of the lathe, the lead screw advanced the tool at a constant rate of speed and guaranteed accurate screw threads. By 1800 Maudslay had equipped his lathe with 28 change gears that cut threads of various pitches by controlling the ratio of the lead-screw speed to the spindle speed.

The shaper was invented by James Nasmyth, who had worked in Henry Maudslay’s shop in London. In Nasmyth’s machine, a workpiece could be clamped horizontally to a table and worked by a cutter using a reciprocating motion to plane small surfaces, cut keyways, or machine other straight-line surfaces. A few years later, in 1839, Nasmyth invented the steam hammer for forging heavy pieces. Another disciple of Maudslay, Joseph Whitworth, invented or improved a great number of machine tools and came to dominate the field; at the International Exhibition of 1862, his firm’s exhibits took up a quarter of all the space devoted to machine tools.

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Britain tried to keep its lead in machine-tool development by prohibiting exports, but the attempt was foredoomed by industrial development elsewhere. British tools were exported to continental Europe and to the United States despite the prohibition, and new tools were developed outside Britain. Notable among these was the milling machine invented by Eli Whitney, produced in the United States in 1818, and used by Simeon North to manufacture firearms. The first fully universal milling machine was built in 1862 by J.R. Brown of the United States and was used to cut helical flutes in twist drills. The turret lathe, also developed in the United States in the middle of the 19th century, was fully automatic in some operations, such as making screws, and it presaged the momentous developments of the 20th century. Various gear-cutting machines reached their full development in 1896 when F.W. Fellows, an American, designed a gear shaper that could rapidly turn out almost any type of gear.

The production of artificial abrasives in the late 19th century opened up a new field of machine tools, that of grinding machines. C.H. Norton of Massachusetts dramatically illustrated the potential of the grinding machine by making one that could grind an automobile crankshaft in 15 minutes, a process that previously had required five hours.

By the end of the 19th century a complete revolution had taken place in the working and shaping of metals that created the basis for mass production and an industrialized society. The 20th century has witnessed the introduction of numerous refinements of machine tools, such as multiple-point cutters for milling machines, the development of automated operations governed by electronic and fluid-control systems, and nonconventional techniques, such as electrochemical and ultrasonic machining. Yet even today the basic machine tools remain largely the legacy of the 19th century.

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