Specialized Cutting Steels

Modern investigations have led to the adoption of specialized cutting methods and cutting tools in up-to-date manufacturing. At the very center of these shop efficiency methods stands the newer types of cutting steels. These have so revolutionized metal cutting operations that production has been in many cases more than doubled.

Cutting Lubrication

By means of properly designed machines and pumps, and by experiment in the uses and nature of numerous oils and mixtures, it is now common practice in some lines of cutting to practically submerge the cutting operation with some one of the several cutting lubricants.

Cutting Speeds

These have been increased from the older series of possible cutting speeds to an extent which has led one enthusiast to predict that the time was not far distant when steel and iron would be cut as rapidly as wood.

Cutting Feeds

The great increase in the weights and consequent rigidity and massiveness of the present-day machine tools, as well as the modern work-holding devices, has made possible an increased feeding of the cutting tool little realized by the older machinist.

Automatics

Under this head may be classed those machines which produce the work in a more or less completely finished state with the least attention. While no machine is so constructed that it can be classed as fully automatic, there are many on the market which are so complete in their action that a single attendant will care for and keep in operation as many as a dozen machines.

Automatic Control

Much advance has been made in recent years in devising means of controlling the operation of machines from a central point. Electrical, hydraulic, and pneumatic devices have been and are being introduced which have for their objective the possibility, when once the machine has been adjusted, of controlling its operations by the movement of a lever or the pressing of a button. Such a control is already in certain use upon large planers, boring mills, etc.

Cold Worked Metals

It has been found that certain machine parts, such as screws, shafts, pulleys, etc., can be formed into their proper contours by pressing, rolling, or squeezing processes, in a manner which admits of a lesser first cost, than that of cutting them from the solid in a lathe, milling machine, or other machine tool. As this work is performed without a previous heating of the stock, it is classed as "cold working".

Die Casting Machine Parts

This process consists in casting, in suitable closed dies under pressure", a previously melted alloy. Parts of small and delicate machinery as well as instruments are often produced in this manner so accurate in dimension and perfect in finish that they are assembled without added machine work.

Special Molding Processes

Machine manufacturing is in many cases confined to producing a machine, many of whose parts are made of iron castings in which exact accuracy of fitting is not necessary. The ordinary loom and certain lines of agricultural machinery are notable examples of such machines. By construction of special molding processes, notably that of machine molding, it is possible to produce many machine parts sufficiently accurate to render them directly usable after having been cleaned and common snags removed.