A machine tool is a machine for shaping or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing or other forms of deformation. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All machine tools have some means of constraining the workpiece and provide a guided movement of the parts of the machine. Thus the relative movement between the workpiece and the cutting tool (which is called the toolpath) is controlled or constrained by the machine to at least some extent, rather than being entirely "offhand" or "freehand".
The precise definition of the term machine tool varies among users, as detailed in the "Nomenclature and key concepts" section. It is safe to say that all machine tools are "machines that help people to make things", although not all factory machines are machine tools.
Today machine tools are typically powered other than by human muscle (e.g., electrically, hydraulically, or via line shaft), used to make manufactured parts (components) in various ways that include cutting or certain other kinds of deformation.
Read more about Machine Tool: Nomenclature and Key Concepts, Interrelated, History, Drive Power Sources, Automatic Control, Examples
Famous quotes containing the words machine and/or tool:
“The momentary charge at Balaklava, in obedience to a blundering command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good? Is there any necessity for a man’s being a tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)