The Machine Tool Industry

TOOLS come into the news infrequently. In wartime, they rate top priority. Afterward, a great war surplus of machines is featured as a dire threat to the machine tool industry. Now, five years after V-E Day, the war surplus has been largely disposed of, with only a very modest number of machines placed in strategic reserves. Today, the machine tool industry is busy on its undramatic daily job of building the machines that raise production and lower costs. Machine tools might be described as the machines nobody knows. They are the power-feed machines which cut metal, removing it in the form of chips. There are five basic types of tools and tool motion. In the planing machine, a simple tool planes off metal much as you shove snow from your sidewalk with a snow shovel. In the turning machine, a simple tool peels off metal much as you pare the circular peel around an apple. In the drilling or boring machine, the tool spirals its cut into a hole. The milling machine uses a rotary cutter, working not unlike a buzz saw. The grinding machine employs a grinding wheel with abrasive grits to rough or finish a flat or cylindrical surface.