MACHINES FOR MAKING MACHINES

WHILE we may glory in the wonderful mechanical progress of to-day, we must not overlook the marvelous skill of the ancient artisan nor forget that it is to his inventive genius that we are indebted for practically every hand tool we possess. Only a few special tools owe their origin to the modern inventor. All the rest date back beyond the twilight of history. We have merely improved upon these tools by slight changes of design or the employment of better materials in their construction.

As users of these tools we cannot begin to compare with the skilled workman of ancient days. Our progress is shown not in the development of skill, but in the loss of it. We have taken the tool out of the human hand and put it into an inanimate machine. It is only very recently that the tool was delivered to the machine and that act marked the dawn of the present remarkable mechanical era.

Machines for making machines date back to the time of the early Egyptians. They had their pole lathes and bow drills, but these machines only partially relieved the workman of his labors, and the quality of the work still depended upon a degree of skill that was acquired only through years of patient apprenticeship.

The pole lathe, by the way, consisted merely of a pair of centers between which the work was mounted, a pole attached to the ceiling and a strap or rope passed around the work and fastened at one end to a pole and at the other to a pedal resting against the floor. (See Figure 24.) When the pedal was depressed, the strap was pulled down and the work was revolved. On releasing the pedal, the spring of the pole pulled the strap up and reversed the rotation of the work. Thus by alternately depressing and releasing the pedal, the work was intermittently revolved against a chisel which was rested on a block and guided by the workman. Small work could be turned out on such a lathe with considerable precision, but when it came to large parts, particularly parts of steel, the workman was easily tired by the effort of operating the pedal and was apt to be irregular in the guiding of the tool.

Up to the middle of the eighteenth century practically no advance had been made over the ancient lathe of the Egyptians, and when, 150 years ago, the steam engine was invented the task of building the engine seemed almost insuperable.

James Watt was a maker of mathematical instruments, a man of great skill and precision as a craftsman, but he dealt with parts of small dimensions. When he conceived of his steam engine, he mentally pictured the various parts as turned out with all the accuracy and finish that was possible in the diminutive members of a scientific instrument. To him it seemed perfectly feasible to turn a cylinder which would be practically perfect in contour, and to fit it with a piston around which no steam could leak. With the lathe then in existence such a fit was easily possible on small work. But when he undertook to have the cylinder of his engine bored, he discovered that there was no machine that could begin to do the work properly. In fact, when Smeaton, who was a prominent engineer of that time, investigated Watt’s steam engine, he declared that it was such a complicated piece of work that neither tools nor workmen existed that could build it. In Watt’s first engine, the cylinder was only six inches in diameter and two feet long, and a special type of boring machine was devised to bore the forged cylinders. But the boring was so irregular that when the piston was inserted and the steam was turned on, nothing would stop the flow of steam that leaked around the piston. In vain did James Watt use cork, oiled rags, tow, paper, and even old hats to stop the leakage. However, the boring machine was improved and later a cylinder, eighteen inches in diameter, was bored with such accuracy that the large diameter exceeded the small diameter in the worst place by only ? of an inch. This Watt considered a very good bit of turning. To-day cylinders of that size that vary from true by half the thickness of the paper that this is printed on would be thrown out as defective.

It was in 1769 that Watt invented the steam engine, but that great event did not mark the dawn of the present era of machinery. For a quarter of a century thereafter there was little progress in the development of machine tools. A boring machine was built that did fair work. There were a few sawmills in which wind power was employed to drive the saw. But lathes were still driven by foot power and the cutting tool was still held and guided by hand.

MAUDSLEY’S “GO-CART”

The real father of the present era was a very clever British mechanical engineer, Henry Maudsley, who undertook to eliminate the uncertainties of the human hand by clamping the cutting tool of the lathe in a rest and arranging the rest to slide along the length of the lathe or transversely toward or away from the center. These two motions made it possible to accomplish all that the workman could accomplish by hand and at the same time the tool was held so firmly that accuracy and precision of turning was assured. Furthermore, he provided this slide rest with a nut that engaged a screw driven through suitable gearing by the lathe spindle. Then, as the work revolved, the slide rest was compelled to move along the bed of the lathe at a uniform rate. By varying the gearing, the speed of the slide rest and the tool it carried could be varied at will, thus making it possible to cut screw threads of any pitch desired with a degree of accuracy unattainable by hand.

Remarkable as was this improvement, it met with the usual opposition that every real advance in machinery received in those days. People referred to the slide rest as Maudsley’s “go-cart,” but it proved such an important element of the lathe and so very valuable that before long it was universally adopted. From that time on the skill of the workman began to lose its importance. The man began to give way to the machine. Precision was possible in large as well as small work. The human element was also dispensed with in the driving of the lathe. The foot pedal was superseded by the steam engine, and the machine came to be known as the engine lathe.

There are many ways of working metals now in common use. Metals may be cast in a molten state, or they may be pressed and molded into shape in a cold state, or they may be hammered either cold or hot, but in nearly all cases in which metal is removed in order to form a piece of work, the chisel is used as a cutting instrument. This is perfectly apparent in lathes and planers, but not quite so apparent in sawing, drilling, filing, and grinding. A drill is merely a spiral chisel which revolves upon its own center. A saw is a gang of tiny chisels, and a file consists of still smaller chisels which are broader than those of the saw. In grinding we have rough surfaces in which particles of emery or carborundum act as tiny chisels. The shears, the punch, and the cutting torch are practically the only exceptions to the rule that metals are always cut by chisels, and even the shears may be conceived as consisting of a pair of broad coacting chisels, while it takes little imagination to see a form of chisel in the punch. The cutting torch is, of course, in no sense a chisel.

In the cutting of metals the work may move against a fixed tool or the tool may move against a fixed piece of work. In a lathe, it is the work that revolves or rotates against the tool. In the drill and the milling machine the tool revolves against the work.

In the planer, the tool is fixed and the work slides against it. The shaper reverses the operation; the work is fixed and the tool moves in a rectilinear direction.

Up to the nineteenth century practically the only machines for cutting metals were the lathe and a crude form of boring machine. The machinists of that day had not reached the stage where they were able to produce anything but round work on a machine. The planer had not been born. It was for this reason that Watt had a great deal of difficulty in getting rectilinear motion for the piston of his engine. He had to invent a complicated system of links and levers in order to obtain a practically parallel motion to guide his piston in and out of the cylinder. When the planer was invented and it was possible to produce straight surfaces with a considerable degree of accuracy, all of Watt’s ingenious parallel motions, went into the discard and the cross-head and guides took their place.

It was not until long after the planer had been invented that Eli Whitney, the American genius of cotton-gin fame, conceived the milling machine. He reversed the operation of the lathe by placing the cutting tool on the revolving spindle and sliding the work against it. Milling cutters consist of wheels formed with a number of cutting edges or chisels which are arranged either on the periphery of the wheel or on the face of the wheel.

Following the milling machine, came the grinder, in which a revolving wheel of an abrasive material served to wear away the surface of a piece of work, and with this form of machine steels of great hardness could be finished with accuracy and a high polish.

THE INTERCHANGEABLE SYSTEM

The most notable advance in machine work came early in the nineteenth century, when what was known as the “American System” of manufacture, or the interchangeable system, was introduced. As long as mechanics were obliged to perform their operations largely by hand, it was impossible to attain great accuracy. Each workman put his own individuality into the work. As a consequence, no two pieces were of exactly the same size or shape. This was true even with the early power-driven machine tools. The parts might be very close to the same size, but careful measurements showed that they varied by a minute fraction of an inch. Hence, when a machine was assembled the unyielding metal parts had to be filed and trimmed and hammered to fit them together. If any accident occurred to a machine, the damaged part could not be replaced by another taken from stock. The entire machine had to go back to the shop where an experienced mechanic would make a new part to replace the damaged one. In those days a machine was not manufactured but was built as an individual mechanism, just as a house or a boat is built to-day.

With the advent of accurate machine tools came the idea of standardizing the parts so that hundreds and thousands of pieces could be made of exactly the same dimensions, and in assembling a machine the parts could be picked at random from the stock and put together without the use of special tools and without requiring any special fitting. This was of special importance in the tools of warfare, because armies need quantity production, i. e., rifles, cannon, etc. More machines of the same kind were required for an army than for any other organization or line of work. At the close of the Napoleonic War the British Government had 200,000 parts of muskets either partly finished or waiting repairs. Their muskets were made after the old system. Each one was built separately with its parts individually fitted together, so that whenever any part was injured, the musket had to be laid aside and sent back to the workshop for repairs.

Long before that time, the idea of making standard guns had been hit upon in France. Thomas Jefferson, while Minister to France, in 1785, wrote of the French system which was then being developed by a mechanic named Le Blanc. He was building a musket in which the parts were of standard pattern, and which could be assembled by taking pieces haphazard as they came to hand and putting them together without special fitting. Thomas Jefferson called the attention of the American Government to this system and showed that it was possible to produce muskets cheaper by that method of manufacture. However, our Government at that time failed to avail itself of the opportunity of utilizing this system of manufacture.

Later on, the idea was taken up in this country by Eli Whitney and by Simeon North. When Whitney attempted to introduce the system, he was laughed at by French and English ordnance officials, and even our own Government officials were skeptical, particularly when they found that it required so much preparation in the way of machinery and designing of parts before a single musket was completed. It seemed like a waste of money to invest in so much preparation. But Whitney was soon able to silence all his critics by taking to Washington ten pieces of each part of a musket and then selecting at hazard from each pile of pieces the requisite parts and putting together ten muskets. It was not long before the foreign governments saw the importance of this method of manufacture. Great Britain later adopted it in the making of her own rifles and called the process the “American System.”

But it was not only in the field of rifles that interchangeable manufacture made itself felt. The New England clock industry provides an interesting illustration. At first the clocks were made of wood, but early in the nineteenth century, a clock maker, Chauncey Jerome by name, designed a brass clock in which the parts were made on the interchangeable system. Instead of building each clock as a separate piece of work, clocks were turned out by the thousands, and at an extremely low price. Soon he had flooded this country with his clocks and began to look around for other markets. Machinery had been used by other clock makers in producing wooden clocks, and movements which had cost $50 each in 1840 had been reduced to $5. But Chauncey Jerome’s clock was made of brass and by means of the interchangeable system of manufacture he could produce it for less than 50 cents. The clock was such a success in this country that Jerome decided to try it abroad. Consequently he made arrangements with an agent in England and shipped over a large consignment. The British Government was astonished at the low price of the clock and was convinced that it had been undervalued. At that time, they had a simple and ingenious method of punishing a consigner who undervalued the goods he wished to introduce into the country. This consisted in promptly appropriating the property at the price given in the invoice. In due course of time, much to Jerome’s astonishment, he received a letter from the British Government stating that his clocks had been confiscated, and with the letter came a check paying for them at the invoice price. Jerome was not in the least dejected by the rebuke; on the contrary, he was rather elated, for, as far as he could figure it out, he had a spot-cash buyer for his goods and no selling expenses. He did not mind at all letting the British Government have the clocks at the invoice price. So he decided to try again with a larger shipment. To his great delight this shipment met the same fate as the first, and in due course another good British check arrived. Thus encouraged, Jerome sent over a third and still larger shipment, but by that time Johnny Bull began to suspect that the Yankee clock maker was getting the best of the bargain and, finally convinced that clocks really could be produced with profit at the low invoice price, he permitted them to enter his country. With this striking example, the fame of the Yankee system of manufacture spread over the world.

In order to have two parts alike, they must be placed under a machine in exactly the same way. In other words, they must be set in “jigs” or frames which are fitted into the machine in such a way that the tools will approach the work from exactly the same angle or penetrate the work to exactly the same depth in ten, or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million pieces, as the case may be. Making jigs and dies consumes a great deal of time in preparation work, but once the preparation stage has been passed, articles are produced with wonderful rapidity and very little waste of time. Formerly it was necessary to determine the location of each hole in a casting separately and spend precious time in adjusting the work to the proper position under the tool. If the hole was to be threaded, it had to pass through several separate operations.

THE TURRET LATHE

After the slide rest invented by Maudsley, the next great improvement on the lathe was a turret head or a sort of turntable which carried a number of tools. The tools are arranged to come automatically into play one after the other. One tool, for instance, may cut a groove in the work, another finish the face of the work, another bore a hole in the piece and another tap the hole. In many cases, several of these operations are performed simultaneously. The head of the lathe is provided with a hollow spindle so that the work is automatically fed to the tools through this spindle, and as soon as one piece is finished, it is automatically cut off and the jaws of the clutch which holds the work, or stock as it is called, open automatically so that a new length may slide forward and be operated upon by the tools. The machine requires no attention once the tools have been set up to the proper angle, except that it must be kept supplied with bars of stock as they are consumed, and with a copious flow of lubricant on the tools. One operator can therefore take charge of a number of automatic lathes. All he does is to feed them; they do the rest.

The modern drill has also gone through a great many developments in order to speed up the work that it performs. When a casting is to have forty or fifty holes drilled and tapped in it, instead of following the old method of drilling each hole separately, a lot of separate drilling spindles are used, each fitted with a drill, and these are brought simultaneously into play. As many as fifty or sixty holes may be drilled at a single operation, and after the holes have been drilled, the drilling spindles move to one side to make way for the taps, which thread such of the holes as are to receive screws. By first setting the spindles in the proper position and then using jigs to locate the work properly under them, the assurance is had that every one of the scores of holes drilled will be accurately spaced apart and the spacing in every casting will be identical.

The multiple tool system is also used in milling machines in which a number of milling cutters either of the face or the end type come into play simultaneously upon a piece of work set in a suitable jig, and cut the piece with absolute precision, so that all castings will have faces accurately spaced apart and cut to exactly the same level.

It is by such methods as these that we are able to produce such large quantities of machinery at remarkably low cost. One of the most notable examples of such work was the development of the Liberty engine during the World War. This engine did not differ in principle from others built in Europe or in this country, but its design was carefully adapted to permit of interchangeable manufacture. No careful finish was used except where indispensable. Special jigs, tools, and fixtures were prepared. Ingenious wrinkles of American manufacture were introduced. All this consumed time, and great was the irritation of the general public. Under ordinary conditions, it would have taken years to have developed the Liberty engine to the manufacturing stage, but under the urgent stress of war, the whole work of design and preparation for manufacture was crowded into a few short months, and then Liberty engines began to be manufactured on a stupendous scale.

CUTTING WITH RED-HOT TOOLS

One of the most remarkable advances in machine tools was due to the studies of Fred W. Taylor. He entered a large steel plant in 1880 and was immediately struck with the enormous waste of effort on the part of the men in the plant. There was at that time considerable dissatisfaction among the workmen, and when Taylor endeavored to speed up work he was faced by the incontrovertible argument that he had no idea how much work a certain machine ought to turn out. There was nothing for him to do but either back down or study machine tools and discover their maximum capacity. This led him to investigate the matter of cutting speeds. For years he spent all of his spare time studying this subject, timing machines and experimenting with different types of cutting tools. He estimated that in the twenty-six years of his investigation he converted 800,000 pounds of steel into chips. What he wished to discover was the best depth of cut, the best speed of cutting, and the best speed at which the tool should be fed into the work. He soon discovered that, contrary to prevailing opinion, the round-nosed tool was better than the diamond-pointed tool, that the coarse slow-cutting speed was better than a fine cut at high speed. He discovered that the best method of lubricating the tools was to keep them bathed in a heavy stream of water, supersaturated with carbonate of soda, so as to prevent the metal from rusting. The best tool steel of that day was known as a self-hardening steel. Manufacturers of the cutting steels had warned Taylor that he must not use water on these tools. Taylor, however, was not satisfied to take the word of others, but proceeded to investigate the matter himself, and discovered that he could safely increase the cutting speed of his tools 33 per cent by the use of a heavy stream of water for lubricating purposes. This led Taylor and his associate, Maunsel White, to investigate the different kinds of tool steels, and eventually they evolved a chrome tungsten tool which could do from two to four times the work of other tools. Later vanadium was added to the alloy, further improving the tool.

At the Exposition in Paris, in 1900, foreign manufacturers were astonished to find enormous lathes operating at high speed with the cutting tools taking such heavy cuts and feeding so fast that the nose of the tool was actually heated to a dull red heat, and yet it kept its cutting edge perfectly. This was a revelation to tool makers abroad, and it led immediately to the adoption of American high-speed cutting tools.

The development of the automobile, which began to take on serious proportions at about that time, is responsible above all other machines for improvements in American machine tools, and for the extension of the American system of interchangeable manufacture. When automobiles came to be made on the interchangeable system and in enormous quantities so that the cost was reduced to within the limits of the average man’s pocketbook, they began to make mechanics of men who before that had never used a tool; and this new and widespread interest in machinery stimulated the production of better and more efficient tools. Hence the progress of machine tools in the past few years has been simply phenomenal.