CNC milling is an integral part of hundreds of thousands of industries in the UK, the modern CNC milling machine being capable of making hundreds of precision parts every hour with no need for human intervention. In this post however we will take a step back in time to learn about the CNC mills of the 19th century, and just how milling has evolved over the decades and centuries.
Milling machines date back to around 1810 and the practice started out with the running of a circular cutter with teeth into a lathe. This rotary filing was not actual milling, true milling being developed to save time and effort when producing parts. The exact date of the first milling machine is not actually known, as some of the very first mills will have been in individual shops where no records of the machines were actually kept. What is known is that the term milling was developed after experimentation with abrading, crushing, and grinding of rudimentary machines.
Long before the milling machine became commonplace, and many centuries before CNC mills, rotary filing was used, the process dating back to circa 1760 and a rotary file that was created by Jacques de Vaucanson. The first milling machine that was no longer rotary appeared around 1814 to 1818. The first milling machines were developed in the USA by Springfield and Harpers Ferry.
At the turn of the 20th century, Joseph Roe gave credit to Eli Whitney for making a true milling machine, and this machine is now most certainly the oldest in existence. The early version by Roe was improved on by many other scholars, inventors such as Robert Johnson and Captain John Hall being very important names in the history of milling machines. The early years of milling were however very different to the CNC mills of today, and the finish from the machine was rough and would be followed up by a finishing process with a hand file.
The jump from milling machines to NC milling would take place in the 1950’s, the first numerically controlled milling machine being developed in 1952 in Cincinnati. The development of the milling machine then went on to make rapid progress, and the very first CNC mills would be found in the 1970’s. These machines were of course very rudimentary, the computer being huge in comparison with those of today, and of course a far cry from the CNC mills we find today.
Progress was still relatively slow in CNC milling, even in the 1980’s, the end of the decade seeing some shops owning CNC machine tools that were controlled by desktop computers. These machines were however expensive, and therefore neither widely available nor widely heard of. As computer technology advanced however, so did CNC technology, and with the development of faster and smaller computers in the 1990’s, CNC mills and their computers soon started to take on the appearance that they have today. With virtually every day there are new advances in CNC, and the machines found in CNC workshops today are capable of making intricate parts, jewelry, aerospace components, and much more.
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