From Past to Present: The History of Manufacturing

We all know that the reality of our everyday lives wouldn’t exist without the manufacturing industry. The device you’re reading this on, your favorite coffee mug, your warmest sweater, your neighbor’s lawnmower, your child’s dearest toy—all of it was put into your hands by this world’s very long line of great manufacturers.

There’s no way to tell when manufacturing truly began, as there’s evidence our human ancestors were building 2.3 million years ago! Their tools looked a little different than ours do now, made out of stone, wood, or bone. As our ancestors slowly became accustomed to creation, items such as jewelry and weapons, like knives and axes, became more common, and were typically made out of materials like jade or flint. Eventually, humans managed one of the greatest feats of mankind: taming fire. In the grand scheme of things, this one accomplishment completely changed our fate as a species. Fire became a key component within the manufacturing industry, and early on was utilized in methods such as smelting copper and firing pottery. As technology slowly continued to advance, we slowly moved away from using copper and began using bronze and iron.

The earliest examples of machining date back to Mesopotamian times. Currently, their version of the wheel is the oldest in the world. Many archaeologists believed that they invented the wheel in order to make the pottery process more convenient, but the Mesopotamians later used wheels for their chariots. The Mesopotamians also invented their own number system, and their proficiency in mathematics was so profound that we still use their methods to this day! Basic math, such as addition, subtraction, fractions, division, and multiplication originated from Mesopotamia. The way we currently measure time in sets of 60 (sixty seconds to the minute, sixty minutes to the hour) also came from the Mesopotamians. Time is a precious asset in the manufacturing world—machines are judged based off their proficiency in working quickly, employees are measured in their ability to meet quotas on time, etc—and who knows how we would calculate that and keep order if it weren’t for the Mesopotamians!

The Medieval Ages yielded a whole myriad of inventions that we’re all intimately familiar with—clocks, glasses, gun powder, windmills, and more. At first, people were resistant against the expansion of manufacturing, scared by these unfamiliar tools and gadgets. In fact, many believed that these items were created by witchcraft. But as familiarity grew within populations, economies began to grow, creativity flowed, and the evolution of manufacturing picked up speed. Smithing, mining, and smelting were the top three methods used during the Medieval Ages. Mining is where manufacturing began and was the most dangerous step in the whole process, as mines would frequently flood and trap miners in the tunnels (this is why most mines were abandoned, not because there was a lack of material). The most commonly mined material was iron, and once it was collected, the smelting stage would begin. This process is essential because it separates the actual metal from other organic materials, which would create consistency in products made from the iron. After smelting came blacksmithing, which was the process of heating up the hunks of iron in a forge, hammering them into shape, and grinding them down once cooled.

Blacksmithing was a massive breakthrough in manufacturing innovation. Originally, blacksmiths could only be found within castle forges, creating armor and weapons. But once it was realized they were also capable of making farming tools and household items, they became essential to the everyday functions of communities all over.

Things truly began heating up during the Industrial Revolution. This is what is most commonly thought about when people think about the history of manufacturing, and for good reason. Between 1760 to mid 1830s, wave after wave of innovation and advancement washed over the United States and Europe, sling-shotting them into the future of efficient manufacturing.

Steam engines became extremely popular in the mid 1700s due to their fuel efficiency and power. Originally, their main purpose was to pump water out of the previously mentioned flooded mines. However, in 1765 James Watt created a more convenient and even stronger version of the steam engine, they became commercialized and put to work in different forms of transportation (namely trains).

While steam engines are arguably the most powerful inventions to come from the Industrial Revolution, they weren’t the only machine to massively change the manufacturing world. The cotton gin changed the game for textile production. After cotton was picked via slave labor, it was bagged and transferred to factories which used the cotton gin to separate cotton seeds from the actual fluffy material. This enhanced the process of processing cotton so drastically that America became its top manufacturer by 1860, providing nearly 75% of the world’s cotton.

Eventually, the boom of innovation slowed by the end of the First Industrial Revolution, allowing for the perfection and maturation of machinery. During the life of the Second Industrial Revolution, dated from 1867 to 1914, mass production became commercialized, electrical wiring became popular, sewage systems were implemented, and everyday life shifted yet again. This period of time is nicknamed as the Age of Synergy, as new technologies utilizing substances such as petroleum, alloys, and electricity continued to make manufacturing quicker and easier. Convenience continued to spread through communities and consumption levels increased exponentially.

Flash forward to 1952 when the first CNC machine was developed. The CNC machine is now a manufacturing staple, included in nearly every shop that manufactures various items, prismatic parts, gears, and more. CNC machines were created with complex shapes in mind, as creating them via machine requires less time and energy than it does by hand. Then, in 1980, the invention of the all-purpose finishing machine was born from the mind of James Richards. These machines finish parts and gears with repeatable precision, completing larger assemblies for a plethora of industries, such as aerospace, automotive, locomotive, and even kitchenware.

The manufacturing industry was born on a foundation of creativity, innovation, efficiency, and convenience. As cities expanded and the human population grew, both the need and desire for goods provided the perfect breeding ground for all four of these factors. With the expansion of the industry, economies flourished with the influx of created jobs and easily accessible necessities and pleasurable goods. Wages were improved, bringing countless families out of poverty, while simultaneously creating a gap between classes that would only continue to expand into the modern day. The encouragement of urbanization coaxed people out of rural living, and cities formed around factories. Today, cities are epicenters for more than just manufacturing—art, music, politics, education, and more. But without the advancement of the industry, no building would stand as tall and as proud as they do now.

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Deburring Debunked: The Ultimate Challenges

The process of finishing parts and gears before assembly comes with a set of its own unique issues. This manufacturing process is vital and cannot be skipped, or else assemblies would fail due to poorly prepared parts/gears. Finding simple, efficient solutions to these issues is crucial, as it ensures overall effectiveness and quality of an assembly.

We interviewed Jim Richards, the founder of James Engineering, and asked him what he finds to be the top three part finishing challenges. Richards has been at the forefront of the deburring industry for a little over forty years and is seasoned when it comes to overcoming a challenge.

1. Conflict with Customer Prints

“One of the biggest challenges is meeting customer requirements within blueprints,” Richards says. “Sometimes, the people writing these specifications don’t understand the tooling that is required with deburring or how it works.” Richards later goes on to say that this particular issue is not only the hardest one to solve, but the most common one faced within the deburring industry. The process of deburring is very complex, and if blueprints aren’t drawn correctly, deburring can seem impossible on that specific part because of the ultimate limitations that come with the process. “Sometimes we don’t have the kind of tools to do what the blueprints ask of us,” explains Richards, “but we’ve learned to solve these problems over the years.”

What Richards has learned is that collaboration and adaptability are key when it comes to sidestepping this conflict. The engineers at James Engineering are in constant contact with their customers in order to meet their requirements in achievable ways. “Sometimes we get companies who send in drawings that we absolutely cannot change,” Richards adds, “Take Pratt & Whitney for example. That’s a big company that requires consistency, we can’t just up and change what they’ve sent us. So we have to do what they’re wanting us to do. But we’ve learned to do the job.”

2. Cost of Consumables

“Understandably, you can’t build a quality part with cheap materials,” Richards starts, “Sometimes you have to spend a little more to get a better part.” Richards explains that every James Engineering machine is built with the intention of using particular brands or items. If these specifications aren’t followed, the final quality cannot match what is promised by one of their machines. “The quality of chamfer we need and produce is from running a finer grit grinding wheel,” Richards explains when asked for an example. “The wheels we use are made of cotton, which don’t last as long as these tiger claw, aluminum oxide coarse wheels. Well, these coarse wheels remove metal fairly easily, but they leave a really jagged finish. People run these wheels for economic reasons, because yes, they’re cheaper, but they will destroy a part.”

James Engineering machines are known for producing beautifully precise and consistent chamfers. This is greatly due to the kind of grinding wheels they use, which are comprised of cotton and resin. The idea of using cotton in a grinding wheel is surprising to many, but in terms of chamfering, this kind of wheel is a champion of it. The cotton acts as a dampener, meaning these wheels’ tendency to bounce is extremely low, especially compared to woven fiberglass wheels. While the cost of running these coarse fiberglass wheels is smaller up front, it will actually cost a greater amount in the long run due to a high rate of scrapped parts. This is a great example as to why using the intended tools is extremely important for overall production. “We have to establish what we’re going to use and that has to be followed.”

 3. Consistency of Parts Presented

The third most frequent challenge Richards has seen is the consistency of parts presented. “We often get sample parts from customers, and their conditions will sometimes change. So then we have to take samples of burrs and look at their size and decide what we can and cannot do. I’ve seen samples come in with burrs an inch and a half tall!” Essentially, machines are manufactured to handle a consistent, established size of burrs for specific parts. For example, a company will send in a dozen samples of the same part. Eleven out of twelve of these parts have burrs roughly the same size, but the twelfth will have a burr substantially larger than the rest. This twelfth part wouldn’t receive complete deburring using the same specs as the other eleven parts—it would require an entirely different set of measurements, tooling, and time. But this issue is easily avoidable as long as customers take care of one particular aspect: changing the part cutter on their CNC machines.

“When you’re making a gear or part, the hob cutter will start off as razor sharp, but it eventually wears out, naturally. We [at James Engineering] have to make sure we qualify when you change your cutter. Operators can’t be running their cutters down to total wear then give us huge burrs. So we need to establish the point of which they change their cutter so we receive parts that we’re capable of deburring.”

This may sound laborious and costly, but again, this ultimately saves money in the long run. If cutters are changed regularly, the predictability and consistency of their parts becomes manageable. This then makes it easier for James Engineering to manufacture machines that work perfectly for a shop’s needs. If the cutter is not changed frequently, extra tools must be added to a shop’s machine, costing them more in money and processing time. “You’re better off to change the cutter and leave our process simpler,” Richards explains.

So, how avoidable are these challenges?

“These are all very easily avoidable!” says Richards. “With consistency of parts presented, we just need to qualify the part that we’re going to deburr and establish that in writing. With the cost of consumables, we have to establish exactly what we’re using and write it into the warranty. Conflict with customer prints is always trickier, as we sometimes can’t change anything about the blueprints we’re sent. [We just] have to be adaptable.”

James Engineering prides itself on being a thorough and precise business—these values can be found at the core of the company. They are what make their machines so consistent and products so repeatable. There’s a reason why their deburring systems are at the top of the market.

What are the ultimate solutions?

With each customer comes a new challenge, but conflict with customer prints, the cost of consumables, and consistency of parts presented are usually given. However, after decades of dealing with the same issues, Richards and those at James Engineering have found that the following are the top solutions:

·      Adaptability

·      Reliability

·      Flexibility

·      Thoroughness

·      Consistency

·      Communication

By adhering to these six simple values, no challenge is too much for James Engineering. 

To learn more about their machines, click here.

To send any sales inquiries or further questions, email Sales@James-Engineering.com