Machining For Dummies

Introduction

Since the day some clever Homo sapiens first used a rock to sharpen a tree branch, thus avoiding being eaten by a prehistoric pack of dingoes, humans have been making things. Starting with wood and stone tools, mankind’s urge to manufacture would eventually lead to the invention of the wheel, agriculture and architecture, and — unfortunately — organized warfare.

Along the way, we figured out how to smelt and cast metals such as bronze and iron. We built printing presses, textile looms, mechanical clocks, and adding machines. But it wasn’t until the development of steel and then metal-cutting machinery, however, that modern manufacturing quite literally picked up steam.

Without metal cutting, now known as machining, we’d still be stuck in the horse-drawn days. It is quite literally the foundation upon which the Industrial Revolution was founded. Mechanization would have been impossible without precisely machined components, and without mechanization, there would be no factories, steamboats, locomotives, automobiles, or airplanes.

Today we’re facing the start of another industrial revolution. Modern metal-cutting machinery isn’t responsible for it, although it can certainly take credit for getting us here. No, the next industrial revolution is digital. Its tools are data and computers and high-speed global networks, and like the other industrial revolutions, it too will change everything.

What does all that have to do with this book? Plenty. Machining and other forms ...