Whitworth Planing Machine
This early machine tool is significant as it cuts flat surfaces in metal components and when patented in 1842 was a significant improvement over previous designs, offering greater precision and ease of operation. Accurately flat surfaces were essential for a wide range of engineering products; machines like this were used in the construction of steam engines, textile spinning equipment and to make other machine tools.
This power-driven planing machine ran a cutting tool over the workpiece, removing a small amount of metal in a straight line. it then steps the cutter to one side, machining overlapping cuts until the entire surface has been levelled.
The designer, Joseph Whitworth, had worked in turn for Henry Maudsley, Charles Holtzapffel and Joseph Clement, all celebrated machine makers. He then set up alone and became the pre-eminent took-maker in Britain. He was a perfectionist, famous for his insistence on precision, standardisation and quality of workmanship. His contemporaries credited him with the "application of logical method and science" to industrial affairs.
Some later commentators have considered that ideas which Whitworth claimed as his own were actually acquired from his celebrated teachers. However, the scale of his achievements was enormous. He was one of the first to produce a wide range of tools suitable for all types of manufacturing. By the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Whitworth's firm had become a world leader in the field of machine tools. - all from adjacent explanatory board.
Seen in the Science Museum in South Kensington, London.
Whitworth Planing Machine
This early machine tool is significant as it cuts flat surfaces in metal components and when patented in 1842 was a significant improvement over previous designs, offering greater precision and ease of operation. Accurately flat surfaces were essential for a wide range of engineering products; machines like this were used in the construction of steam engines, textile spinning equipment and to make other machine tools.
This power-driven planing machine ran a cutting tool over the workpiece, removing a small amount of metal in a straight line. it then steps the cutter to one side, machining overlapping cuts until the entire surface has been levelled.
The designer, Joseph Whitworth, had worked in turn for Henry Maudsley, Charles Holtzapffel and Joseph Clement, all celebrated machine makers. He then set up alone and became the pre-eminent took-maker in Britain. He was a perfectionist, famous for his insistence on precision, standardisation and quality of workmanship. His contemporaries credited him with the "application of logical method and science" to industrial affairs.
Some later commentators have considered that ideas which Whitworth claimed as his own were actually acquired from his celebrated teachers. However, the scale of his achievements was enormous. He was one of the first to produce a wide range of tools suitable for all types of manufacturing. By the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Whitworth's firm had become a world leader in the field of machine tools. - all from adjacent explanatory board.
Seen in the Science Museum in South Kensington, London.