The tree lathe that appeared in the second millennium BC was the earliest prototype of the machine tool. When working, step on the ferrule at the lower end of the rope, use the elasticity of the branch to make the workpiece rotate by the rope, hold the shell or stone chip as a tool, and move the tool along the slat to cut the workpiece. Medieval elastic bar lathes still used this principle. Advertisement inside the article
In the fifteenth century, due to the need to manufacture clocks and weapons, there appeared thread lathes and gear processing machines for watchmakers, as well as water-driven barrel boring machines. Around 1500, the Italian Leonardo da Vinci drew conceptual sketches of lathes, boring machines, threading machines and internal grinding machines, including new mechanisms such as cranks, flywheels, neck tips and bearings. The "Tian Gong Kai Wu" published in the Ming Dynasty in China also contains the structure of a grinding machine, which uses a foot pedal to rotate an iron plate, and adds sand and water to cut jade.
The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century promoted the development of machine tools. In 1774, the British Wilkinson invented a more precise barrel boring machine. The following year, he used this barrel boring machine to bore out the cylinders that met the requirements of Watt's steam engine. In order to bore larger cylinders, he built a water-wheel-driven cylinder boring machine in 1776, which promoted the development of the steam engine. Since then, the machine tool has been driven by a steam engine through an overhead shaft.
In 1797, the British Maudsley created a lathe with a screw-driven tool holder, which can realize motorized feed and thread turning, which is a major change in the structure of the machine tool. Maudsley is also known as the "father of the British machine tool industry".
In the 19th century, due to the promotion of textile, power, transportation machinery and arms production, various types of machine tools appeared one after another. In 1817, the British Roberts created a gantry planer; in 1818, the American Whitney made a horizontal milling machine; in 1876, the United States made a universal cylindrical grinder; in 1835 and 1897, he invented a gear hobbing machine and a gear shaper.
With the invention of the electric motor, the machine tool began to use the electric motor to drive centrally, and then widely used the single electric motor drive. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in order to process workpieces, fixtures and threading tools with higher precision, coordinate boring machines and thread grinding machines were successively created. At the same time, in order to meet the needs of mass production in industries such as automobiles and bearings, various automatic machine tools, copying machine tools, combined machine tools and automatic production lines have been developed.
With the development of electronic technology, the United States developed the first numerically controlled machine tool in 1952; in 1958, it developed a machining center that can automatically change tools for multi-process machining. Since then, with the development and application of electronic technology and computer technology, the machine tool has undergone significant changes in driving methods, control systems and structural functions.