As an introduction to this issue’s extensive machine building focus, MEPCA looks at the story of machine building from its pre-industrial origins to the present day and beyond.
In the most reductive of terms, a machine is a device comprised of two or more parts, each with a defined function, which together perform a task by changing the direction or magnitude of a force. According to this definition, the earliest type of machine would be the hand axe, or ‘wedge’, which is counted alongside the lever, the wheel and axle, the pulley, the inclined plane, and the screw, as the six examples of ‘simple machines’ according to Renaissance scientists. In this respect, those who created these early tools as their trade would have been the earliest examples of machine builders, but these craftsmen were still quite far removed from machine builders as we understand them today.
What we now understand as machine building has its origins in the Industrial Revolution. However, an important precursor to this, and arguably the first example of real industrialisation, came with the invention of the steam engine by English inventor Thomas Newcomen. Being made of metal and therefore harder to work with than the components of early machines used in textiles, which were predominately made of wood, and it required a re-thinking of production processes and, most importantly, precision, standardisation and reproducibility.
In the early 19th century, machine building was pioneered by several key British toolmakers, including Henry Maudslay and Joseph Whitworth. It is here that we see a shift in emphasis from individual specialist toolmakers creating tools in their workshops, to the prevalence of factories, including those specialising in machine building, and the first emergence of it as an independent field. While this evolution started in the United Kingdom, it soon spread to Europe and the USA, where the process of machine building was further perfected by innovative toolmakers and industrialists overseas.
In the first half of the 19th century, the wooden machinery used in textiles was all but replaced by metal machinery, and this trend spread to the production of many other volume-produced products. The increasing standardisation of machine tools and components, made possible by early machine building, fuelled mass production. The swift perfection of the production processes further improved on machine building components, which in turn bolstered production capabilities.
In the present day, machine building is a distinct field that broadly encompasses a variety of specialised activities, covering everything needed for the design, component selection, construction, assembly, installation, integration and optimisation of machines, from their simplest to most complex forms.
Where the transition from wooden to metal components, the increasing standardisation, accuracy and reproducibility of machine parts, and dedicated factories birthed the machine building field as we know it, its current evolution is driven by robotics, automation, digitalisation and artificial intelligence. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and smart factories are enabling machine builders a new level of performance and predictive maintenance that reduces downtime and allows machine builders a greater level of control and agility.
Advances in additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing) not only allows swift prototyping, but also the creation of on-demand replacements, with some machine building factories even having in-house 3D printing capabilities, able to replace machine components as soon as needed.
The future of machine building will be characterised by increasing automation, with smart factories evermore able to operate and regulate themselves with limited human input, particularly as AI driven systems automate many of the processes, including elements of design, while data-driven insights enable processes to adapt to changing demands in real time. For further emerging technologies in the field, continue reading this machine building focus.
