Talk:Machining

The early years of WikiProject Metalworking
[2004-2005]

I am amazed that the only page related to machining is one concerned with it only as a hobby. I also did searches on a number of terms familiar to me from my years as a professional machinist. I was unable to find such terms as 'chuck', 'collet', 'surface plate', 'vertical lathe', 'centerless grinding', |'screw tap', 'screw die', 'tooling fixture', 'tooling jig', 'guage' as a noun (except as regards railroads), 'punch press', 'punch die',  'set screw', 'die maker', etc., etc.

I will attempt to write some articles in this category, and I invite others to criticize my inevitable errors.

Too Old 04:53, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * I am quite surprised too. I would have thought that the hobby was actually Model engineering (of which Machining is a major part naturally). Machining itself is, as you say, more than just a hobby activity. -- Derek Ross |  Talk 08:18, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)

Promo link?
I have removed the following link from this article:
 * www.coherix.com/auto/surfacedetective/Technical%20Foundations%20and%20Heritage/Shapix%20Surface%20Detective%20Carl%20Aleksoff%20%20SPIE%20Paper.pdf

It is intentionally unlinked as I believe the inserter is intending to promote his/her product. The contents of the PDF lead into a promotion of a product. I am listing it here for others to review, however, because it does contain other information that might be useful. I leave it to others to determine whether it should be included. --AbsolutDan (talk) 16:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Edited some errors out
I happened on this page and found that it was aimed in the right direction but had some technical errors in need of fixing. For example, forming is not machining. It is its own process. Machining is needed to produce the tools used form forming. Stuff like that. There are a few other corrections and deletions that were made. I think the article has additional fixes needed but I'm out mental energy to continue at this time. I will come back. I welcome others' corrections and discussion. Kudos to whomever got this article started. Begs (talk) 07:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Smell job shop
This article still has the smell of the original article dating back Nov 2003 "Machining metal in the amateur machine shop". Machining is more than that. And this 18th century lathe picture is awful in this context ! May be good in history pages but not here.

--Michel Deby (talk) 20:38, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I love the smell of a job shop first thing in the morning. Preferably not Monday morning, though. — ¾-10 01:59, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Material removal methods?
From the article, "Conventional machining, one of the most important material removal methods..." I mean, I get it. I understand how it can be defined that way. But "material removal methods"? When you think of "machining", you really consider, "Hmm, what are the possible ways of removing material from something?" That seems a tad abstract and formal. We might as well define the art of sculpting as yet another "one of the most important material removal methods..." My suggestion would be, "machining is one of the most important techniques in manufacturing products out of metal. " [unsigned]
 * Material removal is a standard category in the classification of manufacturing processes, and applies whether your are machining metal, plastic, composites, etc. The consciousness that material is taken away -- becoming waste in the form of chips -- allows the engineer to think, can I make this another way. Material forming is taking a finite amount of material and changing its shape through heat or pressure, yet secondary operations, including machining, may be required--the idea of casting an engine block then boring the cylinders being an example. That leads to research on something like net-shape forming -- how can casting be improved to yield a shape closer to the desired final shape of the product and reduce required machining? That's longwinded and wanders from the point, but the logic behind standard process classification does have a payoff. Wilhkar (talk) 01:29, 17 February 2010 (UTC)Wilhkar


 * I agree with Wilhkar here. A lot of times when people complain about "big words" (to give it a shorthand name), what is really happening is that the person who used the "big" words had in mind a specific set of ideas that led them to use those terms intentionally, for cognitive precision of one kind or another. But it is often all lost on the readers, who only think they hear "big words being used for their own sake". This principle has many instances in life. The answer is not always just to banish big words, but rather to analyze the underlying assumptions behind the word choice, that is, find out "what idea was being thought but not successfully communicated?". And then take that idea and find a way to communicate it succinctly if possible. Maybe not in the current conversation (too digressive), but perhaps in a hyperlinked one. For example, Wilhkar just identified why the phrase "material removal methods" was chosen, and explicated the reasons. And regarding what she said, I totally agree with her point ("…does have a payoff"). In fact, finding ways in which material forming processes can be improved to yield a shape closer to the desired final shape of the product and thus reduce the amount of material removal required is precisely what a bunch of those cool new additive manufacturing technologies are all about, such as 3D printing, selective laser sintering, stereolithography, fused deposition modeling, and whatever else you want to call them (solid freeform fabrication, layered manufacturing, additive fabrication, …). Don't knock abstraction too much—it is problematic to basics-level pedagogy, but it is also vital to gaining any new insights and to inventing any new processes, goods, or services. The trick is to get the pedagogy right by spooning the abstraction only in effective ways. In other words, humans have narrow learning bandwidth, and teaching is the art of maximizing the flow of ideas through that sclerotic vessel. (Pardon my propensity for downshifting in the middle of a metaphor.) Developing Wikipedia content is a subset of that, I figure. A fun subset! — ¾-10 01:44, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

orbital drilling
The section on orbital drilling seems out of place on this page. Shouldn't it be moved to drilling? Wilhkar (talk) 01:37, 17 February 2010 (UTC)Wilhkar


 * There was an article called orbital drilling, but it was really just an adverty article, but it was essentially about circle interpolating, so I figured I could move it here and at some point convert it to a section about circle interpolating. As you can see I haven't gotten there yet. Wizard191 (talk) 23:17, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Regarding circular interpolation: There's a fork for that. It's at "Blind_hole". (Sometime we can spin that section off into any forthcoming main place, such as a yet-hypothetical "Milling_(process)#Circular_interpolation" section). — ¾-10 01:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Methods
I don't agree with the classification used, while it highlights lathe, mill and drill which are important, the miscellaneous section ignores processes like shaping, and shaping is a basic and distinct technique that can't be subsumed under another. Can I suggest a more logical approach, based on the six main swarf generating methods (note that other techniques like broaching and reaming can be classed as sub-types of the first six):

1 - work rotates, axial cutter movement - lathe 2 - cutter rotates, linear work movement - mill 3 - work stationary, rotating cutter with axial movement - drill 4 - work stationary, single edge linear cutter movement - shaper 5 - linear work movement, cutter stationary - planer 6 - work stationary (or linear movement) - multi-edge linear cutter movement - saw 7 - miscellaneous — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.148.251.81 (talk) 14:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)


 * This is an excellent categorization of the methods. Motion is fundamental to swarf-generating machining and the different methods are best understand by what is moving (work or cutter) and in what manner (linear or rotary) as is done here.  One method is missing: 3-dimensional shaping.  This is not surprising.  It is new and made possible only by CNC technology.  With 3-dimensional shaping there is linear work movement, as in milling, and linear cutter movement, akin to shaping except that the toolpath can be 3-dimensional not 1-dimensional.


 * 3-dimensional shaping is distinct from the other methods by its mechanics of material removal. In the methods stated above, the cutter removes material from the work by plastic deformation.  In 3-dimensional shaping the process is controlled fracturing, in which the material is not pulled apart (i.e., plastic deformation) from the work but fractured from it in a controlled manner.  The linear force of the cutter striking the work is sufficient to cause its material to simultaneously reach both its yield point and breaking point.  Achieving this force does require an extremely high feedrate, which conventional CNC machine tools lack. Wm Q Tingley III (talk) 15:10, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you!
As an outsider needing to know what "machining" means I came across this excellent article: it is well written, well structured, comprehensible to noninitiates, and contains useful internal links. Thanks to everyone, whoever you are, who turned this page into the high-quality informative text it now is. --Remotelysensed (talk) 09:14, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


 * As a contributor, I'm glad it worked for you. I happen to agree with you about the pedagogical value. It is nice to hear from others who recognize such value when they see it. Often on WP the only person who bothers to comment is the one who says, in essence, "being more than one paragraph, it's inherently bad, given that I'm too lazy to read, and don't you realize that it would be better if all the explanation and links were deleted?" So cheers to someone who understands the value of explanation and links to readers whose goal is to learn about stuff. — ¾-10 19:58, 21 September 2014 (UTC)