ME 408

MACHINE SHOP THEORY

AND PRACTICE
BASIC MACHINE TOOL
OPERATIONS
• Introduction
• Drilling and Boring
• Turning
• Milling
• Planing or Shaping
• Grinding
 Introduction
Machine tools in use today are the products of the Industrial
Revolution, which started a little more than 200 years ago.
Drilling, turning, milling, planing, grinding, and metal forming, the
basic machine tool processes in use today, evolved from hand tools. It
was not until machine tools replaced hand tools that the life of abundance
we have come to know and enjoy began to evolve.
The development of this new technology did not occur by accident. It is the
result of an unprecedented surge in spending by the machine tool industry
for research and development.
 Introduction

Once machine tools were simple and uncomplicated. This is no longer

true. Machine tools are becoming more and more complex. More features are
being built into their design and performance.
Some machine tools are small enough to be mounted on a table, while
others are so large, they require special buildings to house them. Machine tools
can be classified based upon the operations performed by the machines to shape
metal.
 Introduction
These basic operations include the following:
• Drilling and Boring (including reaming and tapping, turning, and milling)
• Planing (including shaping and broaching)
• Grinding (including honing and lapping)
• Metal forming (including shearing, stamping, pressing, and forging)
In addition to these basic operations there are also newer metal shaping operations
that employ various characteristics of chemical, electricity, magnetism, liquids, explosives, light
and sound.
Variations of these operations are employed to meet special situations.
 Drilling and Boring

Drilling is a basic machine shop operation dating back to primitive humans. It

consists of cutting a round hole by means of a rotating drill.

Boring, on the other hand, involves the finishing of a hole already drilled or cored.
This is accomplished by means of a rotating, offset, single-point tool that somewhat
resembles the tool used in a lathe or a planer.

Two other types of machine tools are included under the classification of drilling
and boring. These machine tools perform reaming and tapping operations. Reaming
consists of finishing an already drilled hole. This is done to very close tolerances.
Tapping is the process of cutting a thread inside a hole so that a screw may be used in
it.
Drilling and Boring
 Turning
Turning is done on a lathe. The lathe, as the turning machine is commonly called, is the
father of all machine tools. The principle of turning has been known since the dawn of civilization,
probably originating as the potter's wheel. In the turning operation, the piece of metal to be
machined is rotated and the cutting tool is advanced against it.

By contrast, the turret lathe is a lathe equipped with a multisided toolholder called a
turret, to which a number of different cutting tools are attached. This device makes it possible to bring
several different cutting tools into successive use and to repeat the sequence of machining operations
without the need to reset the tools. The cutting tools themselves are mounted and protrude from the
turrets.
 Milling
Milling consists of machining a piece of metal by bringing it into
contact with a rotating cutting tool with multiple cutting edges. A narrow
milling cutter resembles a circular saw blade familiar to most people. Other
milling cutters may have spiral edges, which give the cutter the appearance of
a huge screw.
 Milling

There are many other milling machines designed for

various kinds of work. For example, the planer type is built like a
planer, but it has multiple-tooth revolving cutters. Machines that
use the milling principle but are built especially to make gears are
called bobbing machines. Some of the shapes produced on milling
machines are extremely simple (like the slots and flat surfaces
produced by circular saws). Other shapes are more complex and may
consist of a variety of combinations of flat and curved surfaces,
depending upon the shape of the cutting edges of the tool and the path
of travel of the tool.
 Planing
Planing or shaping metal with a machine tool is a process
somewhat similar to planing wood with a carpenter's hand plane. The
essential difference lies in the large size of the machine tool and the fact
that it is not portable. The cutting tool remains in a fixed position, while
the work is moved back and forth beneath it. On a shaper the process is
reversed. The workpiece is held stationary, while the cutting tool travels
back and forth.
 Planing
A somewhat similar operation is known as slotting. This operation is
performed vertically. Slotters, or vertical shapers, are used principally to cut
certain types of gears.

Broaches may be classified as planing machines. The broach has a

number of cutting teeth. Each cutting edge is a little higher than the previous
one, and it is graduated to the final size required. The broach is pulled or pushed
over the surface to be finished. It may be applied internally (for example, to finish a
square hole) or externally (for example, to produce a flat surface or a special shape).

Planers are usually very large. Sometimes they are large enough to handle
the machining of surfaces that are 15 to 20 feet wide and about twice as long.
 Grinding
Grinding consists of shaping a piece of work by bringing it into contact with
a revolving abrasive wheel. In recent years, grinding has found increasing applications
in heavy-duty metal removal, replacing machines with cutting tools. This process is
referred to as abrasive machining.

The grinding machine can correct distortions that have resulted from the
heat treatment process. It may be used on external cylindrical surfaces, in holes, for flat
surfaces, and for threads. Under the classification of grinding are included operations
known as lapping and honing.

• Lapping involves the use of abrasive pastes and compounds. It is limited in its use
to extremely small amounts of stock removal and to situations where there is a high
degree of precision and surface finish needed.
• The honing technique, in contrast, is widely accepted as a process separate from that
of lapping. For example, there are honing machines with rotating heads that carry
abrasive inserts for the extremely accurate finishing of holes.
Grinding
 Other Processes
Metal forming includes shearing, stamping, pressing, and forging metals of many kinds. It
requires the use of many kinds of tools, including the following:
1. Shear - This tool is used to cut metal into the required shapes.
2. Punch press - This tool is used to punch holes in metal sheet and plate.
3. Mechanical press - This tool is used to blank out the desired shape from a metal
sheet and squeeze it into the final shape in a die under tremendous pressure.
4. Hydraulic press - This tool does the same work as the mechanical press by the
application of hydraulic power.
5. Drop hammer - This tool is operated by steam or air. It is used to forge or hammer
white-hot metal on an anvil.
6. Forging machine - This tool squeezes a piece of white-hot metal under great pressure
in a die. During the process, the metal flows into every part of the die cavity where it
assumes the shape of the cavity.
 Other Processes
The research and development efforts of the past few years
have resulted in a number of new operations for shaping metal into
useful parts. Discounting entirely those processes that form metal in its
molten state or in a powder state, many new developments have the
effect of broadening the capabilities of machine tools. Following are
some of the better-known developments:
• Abrasive machining • Fission fragment exposure and etching
• Capacitor discharge machining • Gas forming Hot machining
• Cold extrusion • Hydroforming Laser (light beam) cutting
• Combustion machining • Magnetic forming
• Electrical discharge machining • Plasma machining Spark forming
• Electromechanical machining • Ultrasonic cutting and forming
• Electrolytic machining
• Electrospark forming
• Electron beam machining
• Explosive forming
 Other Processes
A number of the processes were developed to do specific
work, such as machining extremely hard materials. Many of the
developments came about through aircraft, atomic energy, and
rocket research. Some of these processes have been adapted to
production-type machines, as in electrochemical milling, electrical
discharge machining, magnetic forming, abrasive machining, electron
beam machining, electrospark forming, and cold extrusion. A number of
processes are still awaiting the basic research necessary to incorporate
a process into a piece of production equipment. Although some of
these processes are today's curiosities, they will play an important part
in manufacturing goods for a rapidly growing economy.