Looking for Machine Design Chronicles

I'm interested in any media that chronicles the design philosophy of some successful (or unsuccessful) machine tools. Something akin to Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy with respect to (but not necessarily limited to) the reasoning behind design decisions. I'm particularly interested in individual efforts/contributions to a project. This is probably a very small, possible non-existent, set of articles, books, videos but was hoping that the PM community had some gems.

For example, a book/audio commentary/article pertaining to the design decisions, individual contributions and (maybe) prototype builds of the Deckel FP mills or the Hardinge HLV-H.

I'm also interested in folk-lore surrounding machine designs and personal experiences that are related.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I should also include that I'm interested, in the same manner as listed above, in controller designs for CNC.

I think you're right when you say " This is probably a very small, possible non-existent, set of articles, books, videos". Most companies closely guard anything to do with inventions, the reasoning behind critical decisions, and any type of photos or videos taken of any stage of development. Most of this information is kept top secret to stay ahead of the competition, or give them any idea of the reasoning or processes used in the development of new machines.

I worked in the engineering department of a major food company for over 20 years. It was our job to design and create processing and packaging machines that would put our company ahead of the competition. Each engineer, draftsman, and machine builder kept a ledger known as an MOI (Method of Invention) to document every step of the process. The pages in the ledger were numbered so that no one could remove part of the documentation without it being obvious. Each entry was dated and signed by the individual issued the book and was turned in to the department manager once the machine was in the final prototype stages. This information was also used to document patents.

Should someone leave the company or transfer to another position they were required as part of an exit interview to turn over all materials associated with new machine, the concept for those machines, blueprints, work orders, and any other information that could be used by another company to copy or otherwise create a similar machine.

Blueprints were also closely guarded. If they were shared with vendors the vendor had to sign an agreement that they would only share or otherwise distribute the information to authorized individuals. There were a couple cases where vendors disregarded this agreement and consequently paid heavily, not only in monetary damages, but in being barred from ever doing business with our company, and most likely any other company in the same business.

As for photographs and videos, they were only allowed to be taken to document different stages of the design and fabrication processes for tax and patent purposes. They were only allowed to be taken by authorized employees, and had to be turned in to the department head before leaving the premises.

Yea, certainly guarded secrets (at one time and maybe still) that would probably require good will by an employee or someone close to the manufacturers who saw the value and convinced them to release the information. Said person(s) would have to then organize the information into something digestible which may be orders of magnitude more work than the convincing required. A needle in the haystack at best, I know. Had to throw the feeler out anyway. Thanks for the reply.

I pick up little inklings where I can.

For instance, the Lincoln Electric book "Design of Weldments" has an article
about how "A ceetain lathe manuf" changed from a cast iron bed, to a weld fabricated
one (and winning a Lincoln award). They went over some of the calculations for stiffness, showing the new design's internal bracing etc. And the actual tested
stiffness increase as well.
I finally dug deep enough to find this was the lathes made by Axleson.
And it's interesting, there is some discussion on here about those "improved"
lathes, the verdict I never did hear though, cast iron/fabricated.

"Machinery" magazine was a treasure trove of the latest designs, google has
them, you will need to ask them to put them in public view though.

I found an Advert for a "thompson surface grinder" that wwas sold to Monarch,
it details how they did the famous 10EE lathe beds on the grinder, IIRC 3 at a time.

Lucas had a full page ad, showing a customer holding very tight tolerances
on some piece of space hardware, even showed the temp plastic dropcloth
enclosure built around the machine.

As far as the development of C.N.C., Cincinnati was detailing a hydraulic motor
they developed, and applied it to all manner of their N.C. machines.

I collect old books, usually late 1960's as still showed the latest stuff,
before companies shut off the flow of information.

As an aside, I would like to learn of the designer(s) and the work
done on the original J.D. hydraulic excavators, the JD 690 "A" and "B".

Lincoln Electric has some books (most out of print) that detailed their
competition and awards for fabrications. Many machine tools are shown,
the where and the why.

Thanks for the reply. I'll add those to the list and get to searching.

I've got a book, Fundamentals of Machine Design, by C.A. Norman from 1938, It's got some detailed info in it. Don't know if it's available somewhere on line.

I have a few more books to add that have been excellent:


Principles of Precision Engineering by Hiromu Nakazawa
This is packed full of machine design experimentation and decision making from manufacturers. All subject matter is supported with the appropriate math. One of the better resources I have come across.

The Design and Construction of Machine Tools by H.C. Town
Just started reading this one and it's a gem with design information covering gear trains, spindles, cams, machine beds and slideways, lubrication, reciprocating designs etc. Again all subject matter backed with math.

WHEN THE MACHINE STOPPED by Max Holland is the story of the rise and ultimate failure of the Burgmaster company and focuses on the human decisions that led to its demise. Perhaps not exactly what you're looking for but an interesting (however somewhat tedious) look at bad decision-making in an otherwise promising builder of innovative machine tools.

Tom B.

I've just ordered a copy of this book: Fundamentals of Metal Cutting and Machine Tools: B. L. Juneja, G. S. Sekhon: 97821: Amazon.com: Books

Will go over it and report my thoughts here.

I too am interested in machine tool design. A book that might have what your interested in is Advances in Machine Tool Design and Research this is the proceedings of the international machine tool design & research conference. This conference was held every year from 1959 until at least the early 1980's in the UK. Another thing you might find useful is a publication called International Journal of Machine Tool design & Research this was published 4 times a year from 1961 until 1986 I have never been able to find any papercopys of this one. You can buy the individual articles from Elsevier for about $35.00 ea.

Congratulation on finding a copy of the Nakazawa book that's a hard one to find.

Riderusty said:

WHEN THE MACHINE STOPPED by Max Holland is the story of the rise and ultimate failure of the Burgmaster company and focuses on the human decisions that led to its demise. Perhaps not exactly what you're looking for but an interesting (however somewhat tedious) look at bad decision-making in an otherwise promising builder of innovative machine tools.

Tom B.

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I have that book.

Boring as all get out, all political, not mechanical at all.

At least it could have mentioned who the designers were,
how some of the innovations came about.

Appears to be written by an accountant looking at records from the outside.

Doug-

Appears to be written by an accountant looking at records from the outside

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You are probably correct - wasn't it used as a Harvard case study on how to ruin an industry?

I have WTMS, started several times and still have not slogged through to the end.
However, it was an important book for me (read about 2/3ds) in that it showed several points rather starkly.
1.) in the period we tend to think of as the "golden age" of both the machine tool industry, and of the USA capitalist culture, something like 75% (from memory, might be more) of new machine tools in the country were ordered and owned by the government put in plants for the arms war/space race whether directly or indirectly. Since the gov't was paying for it, less fortuitous aspects of the American form of unionism throughout society became normal. Can you say socialism at the top and at the bottom? 2.) Bean counters did cause much of the damage but not necessarily in a simplistic way. Slow growth old companies focused on machine tool manufacture and the inherent long term, start - stop nature of building capital equipment were suddenly treated as if the market was limitless, so long as production could be ramped up to the sky. This mostly worked from the early 50's through the late 60's when the gov't was funding everything both intentionally and by default and the rest of the world was still recovering from WW2. When everyone conceivable had all the machine tools necessary for the time, the by then bloated producers began to crash. 3.) We did kind of give the technology or at least the market away to the asian countries as a legacy of some practices and policies from that period.

smt

Yes, but I really wanted a "History of" type book.

Showing the leading edge of their latest designs, the problems
out in the field, etc.

There is a book out there, sounds very similar to TDTMS,Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (with a New Epilogue): Jefferson Cowie: 9781565846593: Amazon.com: Books

Reasonably aligned to the original request, Form, Structure and Mechanism by Michael French, Macmillan Education (publisher), Springer-Verlag (distributor), 1992. The focus of the book is making engineering design choices. While not purely historical/chronological, there are lots of examples of actual product evolutions, production tweaks, etc.

Handbook of Machine Tool Analysis
Ioan D. Marinescu, Constantin Ispas, & Dan Boboc
Marcel Decker Inc. New York 2002
ISBN: 0-8247-0704-4


Machine Tool Vibration
S.A. Tobias
Blackie. London 1965


Machine Tool Design Handbook
Central Machine Tool Institute Bangalore
Tata McGraw-Hill
ISBN-13: 978-0-07-451564-8
(This book can only be ordered from India. Interesting book. A lot of empirical design which I have found useful do to my lack of math skills.)


Freedom in Machinery
Volume 1 (1984) & Volume 2 (1990) Combined
Cambridge University Press. Cambridge UK
ISBN-13 978-0-521-67331-0 paperback


Mechanisms in Modern Engineering Design
I.I. Artobolevsky
MIR Publishers Moscow
1976
This was published as a six volume set in Russian in 1971 In 1976 it was published in English. The volumes consist of thousands of illustrations of mechanisms. Each mechanism has a drawing and description as to how it works. Very interesting material.)


Handbook of Precision Engineering
Edited by A. Davidson
McGraw-Hill Book co. New York
This is a 12 volume set of books the volumes are as follows 1.) Fundamentals 2.) Materials 3.) Fabrication of Non-metals 4.) Physical and Chemical fabrication Techniques 5.) Joining Techniques 6.) Mechanical design Applications 7.) Electrical Design Applications 8.) Surface Treatment 9.) Machining Processes 10.) Forming Processes 11.) Production Engineering 12.) Precision Measurement

Machine Tool design
N.K. Mehta
This is a book out of India 1984


Principles OF Machine Tools
G.C. Sen & A. Bhattacharyya
Another one out of India 1965


Handbook of Machine Tools
Manfred Weck
John Wiley & Sons 1980
This is a Four volume set
V1. Types of Machines, Forms of Construction and Applications
V2. Construction and Mathematical Analysis
V3. Automation and Controls
V4. Metrological Analysis and Performance Test


Machine Tool Vibration
S.A. Tobias


Handbook of Machine Tool Analysis
Ioan D. Marinescu & Constantin Ispas Dan Boboc
2002


Modular Design of Machine Tools
Yoshimi Ito 2008


Machine-Tool dynamics An introduction
D.B. Welbourn & J.D. Smith
1970


Exact Constraint: Machine Design Using Kinematic Principles
Douglass L. Blanding 1999


Machine Tool Design & Numerical Control
N. K. Mehta
From India 2012


Thermal Deformation in Machine Tools
Yoshimi Ito 2010


Accuracy of Machine Tools
D.N. Reshetov & V.T. Portman
English translation of Russian book 1988


Machine Tool Design
General Editor:
N. Acherkan. D.Sc.
Four volume set, translation from Russian. 1968
Mir Publishers Moscow
From what I understand there was a program in Soviet Russia to translate technical books into english. A lot of them were shipped to India as a program to extend Soviet influence into India. They were also sold in radical book stores around the world. The copy that I have came out of Australia interesting enough.


Introduction to Precision Machine Design & Error Assessment
Samir Mekid Editor 2009


Foundations of Ultraprecision Mechanism Design
S.T. Smith & D.G. Chetwynd 1992


These last few books look interesting, I don't have them but would like to find them.

Beds and Housings of Machine Tools
V.V. Kaminskaya Moscow 1977


Design Of Machine Tools
V.E. Push Moscow 1977


Design & Development of Machine tool
C.A. Sparks London 1959


Concise handbook of Machine Tool Design
O.P. Mamet Moscow 1964

BugRobotics said:

Yea, certainly guarded secrets (at one time and maybe still) that would probably require good will by an employee or someone close to the manufacturers who saw the value and convinced them to release the information. Said person(s) would have to then organize the information into something digestible which may be orders of magnitude more work than the convincing required. A needle in the haystack at best, I know. Had to throw the feeler out anyway. Thanks for the reply.

Click to expand...

"In the beginning".. a hundred to two hundred years ago...the design details were also scant because early-on - during some of the more seminal periods, actually - the formal design and Engineering processes did not themselves exist in the machine-tool industry. Most early developers were more artist, mechanic, patternmaker, and toolmaker than formally trained Engineer. Other things were better-covered. Bridges, steam and IC engines, pumps, hydraulics (see Rogers, Eiffel, Brunel). Canals, locks, dams, railroads, and tunnels, even.

"A short history of machine tools" (L.T.C. Rolt) is as much anecdotal as technical. Actually, it is near-zero "technical".

Oscar Beale, Works Manager and primo technoid at Browne & Sharpe wrote short articles for trade pubs under the pen name "Jarno", some of them pushing the advantage of B&S "new" taper, same name. Hardinge did a similar thing with HIS new spindle-mount taper.

But "where are they now" - the articles? MENTION of them keeps popping up, the articles themselves? Not so much.

Todd's citing of Russian translations is part of a HUGE project the Sovs had going. They also mapped the USA very thoroughly - in some cases better than we had mapped it ourselves.

We were doing the same. I remember exercise wherein I had to find sand, gravel, and timber for Combat Engineer use, class 60 roads, divisional "trains". One ID'ed the materials from stereo pair aerial photos.

The photos had not been taken over US soil.

It is similar to not knowing how far back the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Chinese, Persians, whomever "knew" what it was we "caught them doing", much more recently in a too-scanty archaeological record.

There are gaps, and they are fraught with mystery. You Tube didn't yet exist. Nor even paper.

China - but who reads it well? - turned out to have preserved more and better records than we were aware of. Persia? Egypt? Parts of what HAD been India and its precursors? Not so much. China's invaders were - quite literally -"envaginated". Added to the gene-pool, improved it.

Middle East had a different sort of invasions. Still does. 'nuf said?

SIP6A said:

Machine Tool design
N.K. Mehta
This is a book out of India 1984


Principles OF Machine Tools
G.C. Sen & A. Bhattacharyya
Another one out of India 1965


Handbook of Machine Tools
Manfred Weck
John Wiley & Sons 1980
This is a Four volume set
V1. Types of Machines, Forms of Construction and Applications
V2. Construction and Mathematical Analysis
V3. Automation and Controls
V4. Metrological Analysis and Performance Test


Machine Tool Vibration
S.A. Tobias


Handbook of Machine Tool Analysis
Ioan D. Marinescu & Constantin Ispas Dan Boboc
2002


Modular Design of Machine Tools
Yoshimi Ito 2008


Machine-Tool dynamics An introduction
D.B. Welbourn & J.D. Smith
1970


Exact Constraint: Machine Design Using Kinematic Principles
Douglass L. Blanding 1999


Machine Tool Design & Numerical Control
N. K. Mehta
From India 2012


Thermal Deformation in Machine Tools
Yoshimi Ito 2010


Accuracy of Machine Tools
D.N. Reshetov & V.T. Portman
English translation of Russian book 1988


Machine Tool Design
General Editor:
N. Acherkan. D.Sc.
Four volume set, translation from Russian. 1968
Mir Publishers Moscow
From what I understand there was a program in Soviet Russia to translate technical books into english. A lot of them were shipped to India as a program to extend Soviet influence into India. They were also sold in radical book stores around the world. The copy that I have came out of Australia interesting enough.


Introduction to Precision Machine Design & Error Assessment
Samir Mekid Editor 2009


Foundations of Ultraprecision Mechanism Design
S.T. Smith & D.G. Chetwynd 1992


These last few books look interesting, I don't have them but would like to find them.

Beds and Housings of Machine Tools
V.V. Kaminskaya Moscow 1977


Design Of Machine Tools
V.E. Push Moscow 1977


Design & Development of Machine tool
C.A. Sparks London 1959


Concise handbook of Machine Tool Design
O.P. Mamet Moscow 1964

Click to expand...

I suspect the C A Sparks who wrote " Design and Development of Machine Tools " may well be the Curtis Sparks who was the chief designer for " H W Kearns " the well known maker of horizontal boring machines. Their very successful " S " type machine was named in his honour. I suspect that won't be boring.

Regards Tyrone.

Tyrone Shoelaces said:

I suspect the C A Sparks who wrote " Design and Development of Machine Tools " may well be the Curtis Sparks who was the chief designer for " H W Kearns " the well known maker of horizontal boring machines. Their very successful " S " type machine was named in his honour. I suspect that won't be boring.

Regards Tyrone.

Click to expand...

Confident enough to put 'yer money on the bar, are yah?

digger doug said:

Yes, but I really wanted a "History of" type book.

Click to expand...

You might enjoy this then. It's about J&L during an interesting time. Well written with some good "how they were built" stuff. Hard to navigate, you have to start at the bottom then click around by date. It was a pain, but I thought worth it. Go here then scroll to the bottom of the page

J & L Engineer