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    What is a machine tool? Why is it called "Mother of Machinery"?

    Machine tool is known as the "Mother of Machinery" and is an unnecessary part of the manufacturing industry. Although many people already have a lot of professional knowledge in this area, they may not be very familiar with its evolution and future development. Let’s have a brief introduction about the machine tool and its development today!

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    What is a machine tool?

    According to the International Organization Standardization (ISO) and the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS), a machine tool is defined as: " A machine that is driven by power and cannot be carried by manpower. The machine that achieves the purpose of machining objects by a combination of physical, chemical, or other methods such as cutting, and impact can be called a machine tool.

    " The machine tool can generally be used for forming, cutting, and connecting other tools.

    Equipment of turning, milling, grinding, shearing, and laser machining are all machine tools. With the advancement of technology, the development of related peripheral equipment is also driven. There are also PCB drilling machines, wafer cutters, etc., which are classified as machine tools. Machine tools can be divided into dozens of types according to different machining methods, such as lathes, drilling machines, milling machines, grinding machines, and machining centers that just emerges in the past 40 years, which can have multiple functions such as milling, drilling, and boring.

    According to the scope of application, it can be divided into two groups, general-purpose machine tools, and special-purpose machine tools. The former is less restricted by the weight, size, and shape of the workpiece, and the processing range is larger and can be processed flexibly, but the operation requires more professional technologies, such as the understanding of the characteristics of the machine tool or the selection of cutters, etc., and the latter is mostly machine tools produced for mass production.

    The evolution of machine tools

    The earliest machine tool was the wooden lathe which appeared in about the second millennium BC. It used the elasticity of the branches to make the workpiece rotate by the rope and held the shell or the blade as the tool to move the machine tool along the slats and cut the workpiece. After the fifteenth century, in order to manufacture clocks and weapons, various sketches of lathes, boring machines, and thread machining tools began to be developed, and structures such as flywheels, die thimbles, and bearings were already developed.

    The industrial revolution promoted the production of various machine tools and even realized motorized feed and thread turning, which is one of the major changes in the structure of machine tools. Since the nineteenth century, the development of industrial technology has gradually moved from the United Kingdom to the United States, and with the invention of the electric motor, machine tools began to use electric motors, and by the beginning of the twentieth century, milling machines, planers, and grinders had evolved from a single lathe, creating many conditions for future production mechanization and semi-automation.

    After 1920, machinery manufacturing entered a period of semi-automation, and hydraulic and electrical components were gradually applied to machine tools and other machinery. After the Second World War, the emergence of numerical control and group control machine tools entered the era of automation, which can use digital to store machining programs, requirements, and tool replacement operation data, and send the instructions to the machine tool to meet processing needs. After a long period of development, the machine tool has gradually developed and matured, and has the title of "Mother of Machinery".

    The industry chain of machine tools

    In recent years, due to the rising market demand, the production base of machine tools has gradually transferred to Asia, and the machine tool industry chain has actually formed an industrial cluster in central Taiwan. In the early days, most advanced technology and equipment imported from abroad were used to copy and improve, and then they mainly attacked the market of developing countries in Southeast Asia at a low price.

    Machine tools are used in a wide range of applications, including aerospace, national defense, automobiles, bio-medicine, electronics, etc. The machine tools produced in Taiwan are mainly general parts for computers, communication, consumer electronics, automobile, motorcycle industry, etc., and play an indispensable role in the industry.


    Future development of machine tools

    In order to meet the needs, the current development mainly focuses on providing cost-effective high-quality products, as well as customized system integration and service development. Through the upgrade of machine tool hardware, combined with manipulators and automated processes, costs are greatly reduced. There are also some manufacturers towards the development of machine tools for composite material processing, in line with the trend of material replacement, and through the combination of software and hardware, with high-tech value controllers, it can improve processing accuracy, collect data, and analyze conditions to achieve customization system services to achieve higher production efficiency.

    Under the technological evolution and industrial demand, the machine tool can not only meet a single demand but also tends to complex multi-function integration.


    Main image photo by photographer: Daniel Smyth, link: Pexels

    References: Pixnet / myMKC / kknews / Stockfeel

    This article was written by Machsync, please do not distribute, give or sell for commercial use or in any way. Any use such as reprinting, excerpting, copying, and creating images is prohibited without permission.

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