The Early History Of Cnc Machining
From the cuckoo clock to the computerized numerical control assembly line, the history of automation in precision engineering is a study in the development of machines used as tools and controlling other tools thus the term automation. The jump from automated tools that could reproduce a product went from manually built machines to feeding a computer an abstract code that could produce the machine through automation that would produce a product thus computerized numerical machining.
From the cam technology that had been used in music boxes and cuckoo clocks, inventors Thomas Blanchard and Christopher Miner Spencer developed lathes. The machine tool industry of the 1800’s did not use the work of Jacquard Loom and Charles Babbage in abstractly programming controls in mechanical computers.
Automation was industrialized with the development of tools that could copy templates using a stylus through the use of hydraulics like the Pratt and Whitney “Keller Machine”. In the 1950’s General Motors used a method to capture the manual movements of a machinist and re-play those movements on command.
The degree of reliability in the reading by the machine of the abstract code was a problem with developing a computerized numerical control machine. The problem was solved with the invention of the servo that gave right measurement information.
When one servo’s performance was repeated by a remote servo a Selsyn was made. The products of a Selsyn could be read by various mechanical and electrical systems to ensure that the right information had been transferred.
While working for General Electric, Ernst F. W. Alexanderson, a Swedish immigrant, suggested that Selsyn be used for machining control. Using a mechanical computer, Alexanderson was able to run big motors on little force, and General Electric used this invention in their gun laying system for United States Navy Ships.
Numerical control machines are credited to the work of John T. Parsons in 1942 in his efforts to make a helicopter propeller. Parsons turned to MIT in an effort to get their suggestions on his punch card input machine, and was surprised by their taking his invention and leaving him out of production.
Later, John Runyon used computer control to make punch tapes on the Whirlwind. In June, 1956, the Air Force proposed a uniform “programming” language for numerical control introducing computerized numerical control.
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