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.
An innovation from the cam technology that had been used in music boxes and cuckoo clocks were the lathes developed by inventors Thomas Blanchard and Christopher Miner Spencer. In the 1800′s, Jacquard Loom and Charles Babbage invented abstractly programming control in mechanical computers, though not used by machine tool control makers.
Applying hydraulics to tracing templates using a stylus, which helped industrialize automation, developed machines like the Pratt and Whitney “Keller Machine”. Capturing the manual movements of a machinist on a machine and playing those movements back on command by a machine was a method invented by General Motors in the 1950′s.
The problem with developing a computerized numerical control machine was in the degree of reliability in the reading by the machine of the abstract code. The invention of the Servo, which gave right measurement information, solved that problem.
A Selsyn was made by the performance of two servos. A Selsyn could be read by a variety of mechanical and electrical systems to ensure that the right information had been transferred in their products.
A Swedish immigrant employed by General Electric, Ernst F.W. Alexanderson, suggested that Selsyn’s could be used for machining control. General Electric used Alexanderson’s use of a mechanical computer that amplified torque letting big machines to be run by little force, 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.
Using computer control, punch tapes made on the Whirlwind were made by John Runyon. A uniform “programming” language for numerical control introducing computerized numerical control was proposed in June 1956, by the Air Force.
You must log in to post a comment.