Machine design

“ The machines built machines, had been doing it for decades in fact, but now they did one thing more—they designed them. Now the problem could describe the type of machine needed, and the worker machine would design it, and turn out the completed machine! But these machines were rapidly perfecting the beginning that man had made. ”

“ The platform of the machine is, therefore, rather larger than is necessary, and I find if I were to design a completely new machine, that it would be possible to greatly reduce the weight of the framework, and, what is still more, to greatly reduce the force necessary to drive it through the air. ”

“ Measurements across accurately lapped plugs in the holes, showed the greatest deviation from truth to be 0.0002 inch, and running from that to accuracy so great that no error was measurable. This same work with buttons would have required considerably more time.
Machinery is the leading journal in the machine-building field and meets the requirements of the mechanical engineer, superintendent, designer, toolmaker and machinist, as no other journal does. Machinery deals exclusively with machine design, tool design, machine construction, shop practice, shop systems and shop management. ”

“ The machine can only increase the power and scale of the crafts that have already been perfected by hand-work. Their principles, and the art of their design, do not alter under the machine. If the machine disregards these its work becomes base. ”

“ The strangest point about the materialistic or mechanistic conception of things is that every machine without exception has an inherent purpose and design. It is intended by its inventor to do certain definite things in a certain definite way. If an animal, therefore, is a machine, it must have a design and purpose, and presumably a designer. ”

“ In analyzing the process by which a machine was designed, Willis observed: "When the mind of a mechanician is occupied with the contrivance of a machine, he must wait until, in the midst of his meditations, some happy combination presents itself to his mind which may answer his purpose." He ventured the opinion that at this stage of the design process "the motions of the machine are the principal subject of contemplation, rather than the forces applied to it, or the work it has to do." ”

“ To pass in machine construction and drawing, he must be able to apply this knowledge to the representation of machinery. He must be acquainted with the form and purpose of the simpler parts of which machines are built up and must have had some practice in drawing them. To test his knowledge, rough dimensioned sketches, more or less incomplete, of simple machine details will be given him, and he will be required to produce a complete drawing in pencil to a given scale. ”

“ And in the same way the whole scheme must be made to conform to the economic conditions.
If the machine under consideration is like a machine tool, and is to be offered for sale, then the manufacturing, selling, and use must be taken into account. In machine-tool design a wholly new invention is an exceedingly rare thing, and a successful new machine is still more rare. ”

“ The credibility of any design proposed for such a machine or machine system depends first and foremost upon whether that design is consistent with reasonably foreseeable automation and materials processing technologies. ”

“ The favorable features in machine designs are: directness of mechanism for the purpose; its simplicity and its efficiency; its adaptability to the habit of thought and action of makers and users.
The obstacles to its success are any of the features it may have that cannot be readily comprehended by those who are to build, sell, buy, and use these devices. It is of little value for real success for a machine to be one that is readily understood by a draftsman or manager, or that it is one that may be made to perform wonders in the hands of a skilled expert. ”

“ Unless it is a brand-new type of machine, designed to do something that has never before been done by machinery, or to do it by a different mechanical method, there is obviously a great saving of time and money in buying a machine from specifications that insure the correct performance of its expected duty over the other plan of first buying the machine and then trying it out in practice to see whether it will do what we want done. ”

“ In endowing iron with the cunning of genius and the terrific power of the fabled cyclops, the modern mechanic has revolutionized the field of human effort, transferring it from the foundery and the smithy to the machine-tool shop. It is here, and here alone, that steam-driven machines can be made. They may be conceived in the mind of a Watt or a Stephenson, but they can be made only by the automatic tools of a Maudslay, a Clement, a Bramah, or a Nasmyth. ”

“ Within a decade after that first discovery of the principles of mechanical thought the machine was made that could not only solve problems, but could also originate them. They had developed a brain. It was a great machine, which occupied an entire building, with its massive framework bolted down to the ground.
Man began a rapid decline, for the machines did all his work. With the construction of a machine that could originate a problem, man made a mistake. He had created a machine that was more powerful than he, except that it was immobile. ”

“ To-day popular usage is restoring to the term its original broad interpretation, and it is in this popular but rather unorthodox sense that “Mechanics” has been chosen as the title of this book; for although certain elementary principles of mechanics are described and explained, the major portion of the book deals with machines and their evolution to their present stage of perfection.
Machines are man’s creation, and yet in a sense the man of to-day is a machine product; for modern civilization owes its material and in large measure its esthetic development to machinery. ”

“ There were neither planing, slotting, nor shaping machines, and with the exception of very imperfect lathes and a few drills, the preparatory operations of construction were effected entirely by the hands of the workmen. Now, everything is done by machine tools, with a degree of accuracy which the unaided hand could never accomplish. The automaton, or self-acting, machine tool has within itself an almost creative power; in fact, so great are its powers of adaptation, that there is no operation of the human hand that it does not imitate. ”

“ Inventors may 179not be put like engineers, in show windows in front of their machines, but they are all wrought into them. From the first bit of cold steel on the cowcatcher to the little last whiff of breath in the air-brake, they are wrought in—fibre of soul and fibre of body. As the sun and the wind are wrought in the trees and rivers in the mountains, they are there. There is not a machine anywhere, that has not its crowd of men in it, that is not full of laughter and hope and tears. The machines give one some idea, after a few years of listening, of what the inventors’ lives were like. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have constantly observed that all new invented machines entirely change shape, dimensions, weight and general arrangement of parts as they proximate to perfection, so that the perfect machine could not be recognized by persons unacquainted with the subject as being intended for the same purpose as the original machines, yet, during all these successive alterations, the principle of the machinery remained unchanged. ”

“ The express purpose of that machine is to produce true surfaces, and it is itself constructed of slides, according to the truth of which will be that of the work performed. When it is considered that the lathe and the planing engine are used in the making of all other machines, and are continually re-producing surfaces similar to their own, it will manifestly appear of the first importance, that they should themselves be perfect models. ”

“ People became so accustomed to the perfect functioning of a machine or a clock, so impressed with its regularity and intelligible complexity, that they began to look upon mechanism as a primary thing capable of “explaining” many non-mechanical things, not excluding the phenomena of life. Why should not man himself, the inventor of machinery, be a machine? ”

“ When any part of a line requires a dot or mark to be made, the Machine strikes a blow there; and when no impression is to be made, the Machine (by means that will be shewn) suffers the cylinder to pass that place without striking. The means of regulating this is committed to workmen who merely know how to read off the pattern in it’s length, as it is now read off in it’s width by the weaver. To describe the construction of the Machine, (as exhibited in figs. 3 and 4 of Plate 50) A is the cylinder to be engraved; and B is a worm-wheel fixed to it’s mandril, and destined to turn it. ”

“ Although the development of modern machinery is largely concerned with motor and transmitting mechanisms, it is to the working machine we must look in order to get a clear idea of the differences between machines and tools. A tool may be quite simple in form and action as a knife, a needle, a saw, a roller, a hammer, or it may embody more complex thought in its construction, more variety in its movement, and call for the play of higher human [46] skill. Such tools or implements are the hand-loom, the lathe, the potter's-wheel. To these tools man stands in a double relation. ”

“ Following back machines to the earliest forms in which they have been used in historic times, we find in different places contrivances of various kinds in use,—from somewhat complicated machines to the very simplest arrangements,—all of which must be called "machine." We are not yet in a position to discuss the criterion of the comparative difficulty of their invention ”

“ Such are among the triumphs of modern mechanical engineering, due in a great measure to the perfection of the tools by means of which all works in metal are now fashioned. These tools are themselves among the most striking results of the mechanical invention of the day. They are automata of the most perfect kind, rendering the engine and machine-maker in a great measure independent of inferior workmen. For the machine tools have no unsteady hand, are not careless nor clumsy, do not work by rule of thumb, and cannot make mistakes. ”

“ In course of time various modifications of the machine were introduced—such as the planing machine, the wheel-cutting machine, and other beautiful tools on the slide-rest principle,—the result of which has been that extraordinary development of mechanical production and power which is so characteristic a feature of the age we live in. ”

“ In inventing and designing a new machine, one must first thoroughly familiarize himself with its desired performance, as the success or failure of his mechanical creation depends on how nearly perfect that performance is, compared to established or desired standards; and the performance of that machine when made will truly denote how well its designer understood it, and his skill in mechanical manipulation to produce it. ”

“ Where they showed the possession, in any special degree, of a true mechanical faculty, I was enabled to select from the working labourers the most effective men to take charge of the largest and most powerful machine tools—such as planing machines, lathes, and boring machines. The ease and rapidity with which they caught up all the technical arts and manipulations connected with the effective working of these machines was extraordinary. ”

“ All over the country, and even on the Continent of Europe, and in America, thousands of mechanics, and many men of mechanical tastes in other professions, were familiar with the principles of the new machine, and were speculating upon its value for all the purposes to which it has since been applied; and a multitude of enthusiastic mechanics, and a larger multitude of visionary and ignorant schemers, were experimenting with every imaginable device, in the vain hope of attaining perpetual motion, and other hardly less absurd results, by its modification and improvement. ”

“ Along with these practical advantages, its application in science is full of promise.
Among the machines, the extraordinary complexity and ingenuity of whose construction excited great admiration in America and Europe, is one for making paper bags. Many men, leading mechanics among them, had until then vainly sought to construct such a machine. ”

“ How shall a machine be constructed that shall most efficiently embody, and accord with, not only those scientific principles, but also all of those principles of engineering practice that so vitally affect the economical value of every machine? ”

“ The difficulty of making a successful machine of this kind to meet the new demands for accuracy, speed, convenience, and safety, has been overcome gradually in recent years and there are now several machines quite efficient and adequate to meet these demands of the modern manufacturer. ”

“ The purposes of machines being continually more complex, simplicity must not be looked upon as absolute, but only in its relation to a particular purpose. There are many very complex-looking pieces of apparatus which work so directly along each of their main branch lines that they are in reality simple. It is usual that the first attempt to carry out a new purpose results in a very complicated machine. ”