1 курс - 2 семестр / unit 11 - WHAT IT IS A MACHINE TOOL

WHAT IT IS A MACHINE TOOL?

The variety and combinations of machine tools today are unlimited. Some of them are very small and can be mounted on a work-bench but others are so large that we have to construct special buildings to house them. They are powered to manufacture not only products or parts (usually metallic but not only) but they are the machines enabling the production of all the other machines including themselves.

Their distinctive characteristic is that they work with a large variety of materials, metal in particular, to produce a required shape. This applies equally to the small precision balls of ballpoint pens as to the most intricate components of aircraft and satellites. Machine Tools manufacture every day life objects that make our life easy.

. In the process of converting the raw materials of the countryside into finished. beautifully intricate machines, no step is more important than that of the machine tool. It is actually is the master tool of all industrialization.

By these tools, great masses of metal are cut and shaped into precision instruments. By these tools, automobile camshafts are turned, holes are properly located and drilled in the wing spars, gears for airplane motors are accurately ground, barrels for guns arc carefully rifled.

There are many technical solutions to obtain a specific shape from a piece of metal. The most common procedures are:

• Cut a pattern from a sheet of metal for instance. The technology used includes cutting tools, laser, jet of high pressure water…

• Sculpt a metallic block by removing material by process like drilling, milling, electrochemical discharge…

• To shape the piece by bending, stamping…

In order to obtain complicate pieces a combination of techniques can be applied.

There is a large diversity of Machine Tools types: manually or electrically powered, manually or automatically operated, simple lathes or complex machining centres, from machines making pieces smaller than a fraction of millimetre to big machines to manufacture pieces of tens of metres.

Technological process improves accuracy of machine tools. Today’s equipment can produce parts with very high accuracy. One can find a number of machine tools that can measure and inspect their production themselves. A great many of such clever machines can be found today in our industry. Since machine tools become faster and more complex, automatic measurement and inspection should to be of greater importance. Automaton is one of the main factors of engineering progress.

machine tool
metalworking machine tool	металообробний станок
distinctive characteristics	відмінні характеристики
in particular	зокрема
required	потрібна ( форма)
intricate components	складні деталі, компоненти
to convert	перетворювати
precision	точний
camshafts	розподільний вал
a solution	рішення
to obtain	отримувати
a pattern	зразок
to remove	видалити
manually	вручну
a fraction of millimeter	долі міліметра
performance	робоча характеристика
capacity	виробничі можливості, потужності
to encompass	здійснювати, виконувати
to apply	застосовувати