For this anniversary issue, we consider developments and technologies that have been important throughout nine decades of being modern.

Peter Zelinski | Editor-in-Chief

They say it was the pockets common to machinists’ outfits at the time. The original dimensions of Modern Machine Shop were chosen to allow the machinist of 1928 to carry the magazine either in the side pocket of a shop coat or in the chest pocket common to some machinists’ aprons. While the publication is no longer that small size today (we first changed its dimensions in 2008), many readers of MMS still keep the magazine close at hand and close to their hearts.

They really do. I am biased, of course, but the frequency with which we hear from readers who honor us by describing their appreciation for the publication and its work over the years leaves me persuaded that MMS is more than just an industry trade magazine. The affection and loyalty the magazine has won stem in part, I believe, from the priority this magazine has had from the beginning, the priority that focused on those very pockets in the machinists’ clothes: an aim to belong to this industry. Those of us who produce MMS work for Gardner Business Media, the same family company that began by launching this book. And at the encouragement of owners of this company, we give our primary sense of allegiance to metalworking rather than to our own field of media or publishing. The business philosophy of Gardner and MMS has always been this: Focus on manufacturing—aim simply to be of greater and greater use to manufacturers—and success will come. It has worked so far.

The June 2018 issue marks 90 years of Modern Machine Shop. We wanted to observe the milestone. Enough of us involved with MMS have long-enough tenure that we remember the 75th and 80th anniversaries, which we allowed to pass only lightly considered. We wanted to do better this year, but how? Should we look back at major developments of the magazine?

The problem with that approach is the developments we would be apt to choose—special issues, changes in media, transitions on the editorial team—would seem significant to us, the staff. The MMS reader experiences different milestones with the magazine. They relate to ideas explored and technologies adopted because of what the reader found in its pages. We never get to know which specific magazine issues offer the breakthroughs for our readers because the important discoveries, the right ideas that come at just the right time, are different for every shop. What our readers appreciate about MMS and what they benefit from are its regular issues.

So that is the way to look back. In a special collection of articles in the pages to follow, we look beyond just epochal or event-defining issues of the magazine. Rather, we look back at regular issues of Modern Machine Shop out of the many decades of the magazine’s history. Decade by decade, the magazine has always sought to be relevant and helpful to the metalworking business leaders and professionals of the time. What did that look like, and how does it look to us now? The staff of MMS has spent some time poring through back issues in search of articles that highlight where manufacturing has been, and that might have offered some of those milestones representing advances for shops at the time. Let us share with you what we found.

But first, on behalf of all of us involved with MMS, let me extend my gratitude. Thank you for giving us your attention; thank you for giving us the chance to aid you in your work. Likely there is no machinist’s apron you wear today, but thank you for slipping the magazine into briefcases and carry-on bags. Thank you for passing it through the office and through the shop until its covers tear and its pages become creased. Thank you for 90 great years of getting to be part of this industry.

Now, stay with us a while longer and read on. Here is what was going on in some of those 90 years.

How They Rolled During World War II

Peter Zelinski | Editor-in-Chief

Here is a statement few would contest: U.S. manufacturing capability was vital to the Allied victory in World War II. Judging by the ads and articles in issues of Modern Machine Shop through the early 1940s, that same point was just as apparent while the war raged. Indeed, by 1943, manufacturers were already anticipating the coming victory. An ad from South Bend Lathe Works in that year invited readers to place advance orders for machines that would be manufactured for them just as soon as the needs of the War Department no longer dictated production.

That same year, a nine-page feature article appeared in the pages of MMS that offered a detailed appreciation for—of all things—roller bearings.

The article caught my eye in no small part because the bearing is such a frequently underappreciated component. Even among manufacturers, the bearings allowing for smooth and precise motion of their machines are items rarely considered unless one fails. Yet the editors of Modern Machine Shop in 1943, and presumably the readers then as well, could easily recognize the significance of roller bearings as a component of the vehicles and weaponry our forces were using to fight overseas. Nine pages about how Timken roller bearings are manufactured was apparently exactly the right piece for the time.

Seventy-five years later, I turned to Timken again in the spirit of the same appreciation. I showed the article to representatives of the company involved with bearing manufacturing and asked them what has changed.

The importance of the product has not. Today, the company provides mechanical power transmission products along with various bearing types, yet the tapered roller bearings in the World War II-era article remain an easily recognizable item today, still accounting for a large share of the company’s business. Not surprisingly, however, practically every detail of the manufacturing process has changed, and Stephen Johnson says the differences started with the steel.

Dr. Johnson is the bearing maker’s head of R&D and a 43-year veteran of the company. He says the post-war period began what in retrospect seems to him to have been the “gravy years” for the company’s sales. Long-lasting bearings were difficult to manufacture then, and Timken’s expertise gave it far less competition than it faces today. The end of that period came in the late 1970s, he says, because of a development Timken itself helped to realize. Advances in steel processing—specifically, cleaner steel via air melting as opposed to expensive vacuum melting—resulted in high-performing steel at a previously unachievable low cost. By beginning with better steel, it became less difficult to make long-lasting bearings. Suddenly, Timken faced competition from companies that previously would not have been able to challenge it.

Throughout the decades since then, the response that has kept Timken successful has been roughly the same as that of other manufacturers affected by disruptive technologies or market changes. That is, Timken has continually sought to win savings from more efficient manufacturing and to improve its product features to serve higher-value markets.

The steel-making business and the bearing-making business were split into separate entities in 2014, TimkenSteel and The Timken Company. Dr. Johnson belongs to the latter. He shared the 1943 article with several colleagues who commented on various ways manufacturing has advanced. Comparing the processes then and now, here is what they see:

• Inventory. Praveen Pauskar, group leader and technologist for Timken, notes that large inventories of finished goods or work-in-process were apparently taken for granted back then, but now they are recognized as significant sources of cost. This recognition has influenced the choice of part-making operations, he says. The article shows that his company’s process 75 years ago involved races for small bearings made from steel tube cut on automatic screw machines. “The screw machines were great for volume but not flexibility,” he says. Today, the company makes races of many sizes through a combination of quick-change-over forging and milling on CNC machining centers, the combination of which enables economical, just-in-time adaptation to changing order demands without a large glut of parts moving through processing.
• Surfaces. “I don’t see any reference [in the article] to Superfinishing,” says Rahul Chaudhari, manufacturing and metrology manager. From this, he guesses that the process was not part of production then. It is essential today. Superfinishing, in which a fine-grit abrasive is used to produce a smooth surface with a crosshatch pattern instead of grinding’s parallel lines, enables Timken to realize the surface tolerances now required. At a basic level, he says, “the grinding processes are much the same as they appeared to be 75 years ago.” They are now simply more automated, more productive and computer-controlled. Grinding today generally reaches 16 to 20 microinches roughness average (Ra), which is frequently insufficient. Superfinishing brings the surface to better than 5 microinches Ra. This manufacturing advance has permitted the product line’s advance, because a smoother surface means less loss due to friction, allowing a given amount of power to be driven through a smaller bearing volume, as well as greater durability for the bearings.
• Inspection. Bob Wolfe, who is group leader for nondestructive evaluation (NDE), points to the lack of this practice as the omission that seems glaring to him. An example of NDE used today is vision systems, or cameras for detecting defects and other nonconformances. “Back then, I think they would have had a lot of people at benches manually inspecting,” he says. (In other words, they did use vision inspection, just a very different kind.) That benchwork would have demanded quality assurance through auditing samples, he notes, since manually inspecting every piece would have been labor-prohibitive. “Today our customers often expect 100-percent inspection,” he says. More is known now about the limitations of auditing. “Some nonconformances are sufficiently random that catching them through auditing amounts to just luck.”
• Gaging. Larry Keller, metrology and gaging technologist, recognizes a great deal that has improved in the area of gaging—for example, the reliance then on dial indicators providing 0.0005-inch resolution at best. Today, digital sensors offer resolution 100 times narrower. “Back then, we would have used ‘blue’ to visually evaluate form, whereas now we can measure the form precisely,” he says.
• The most notable part of the 1943 article for Mr. Keller might have been its very last sentence, which refers to “a profilograph capable of measuring surface irregularities to within one millionth of an inch.” “I would like to see that gage!” he says in amusement.

The writer of the piece got this detail wrong. Has MMS’s capability in reporting improved to the same extent that Timken’s manufacturing has? I will make a confession: We still get details wrong sometimes. In the case of my colleague from 75 years ago, I cut him a lot of slack. There was a war to fight, after all. And given that it was a war relying on manufacturing, he was doing his part.

The Radical Becomes Practical in the 1960s

Matt Danford | Senior Editor

Known mostly for sweeping cultural and political change, the 1960s also were shaped by machining technology. Pastel-toned Modern Machine Shop issues from that decade feature images of jets and rockets, evidencing the primacy of the space race and the Cold War and the associated need to deal with new materials and material requirements. The first articles appeared about industrial lasers, and about electrical discharge machines (EDMs) that could cut with wire rather than solid electrodes. Perhaps most notably, the first MMS issues published without ads on the cover were also among the first toregularly dive deep into numerical control (NC) technology. Running mostly onperforated tape, NC machine tools were becoming small and inexpensive enough tochange life within the shop as radically as new attitudes and ideas werechanging life outside it.

“There is the likelihood of a bleak future” for shops that do not stay abreast of the latest NC developments, wrote then Editor-in-Chief Fred Vogel in November 1964. And yet, even in a column surrounded by editorial and ads alike cheerleading NC’s proliferation, his tone remained measured.

Mr. Vogel’s words are as applicable today as when he wrote them more than half a century ago (likely on a typewriter). Granted, he could not have predicted the rise of additive manufacturing when he wrote that “There is no substitute for either the man or his simple machine where he can produce the spare part, the variation, the modification, the one of a kind, the experimental piece, the parts not applicable to the tape machine, the shop that stresses flexibility and ingenuity with all types of equipment, and so on ad infinitum.” Nonetheless, manual mills and lathes have not been eliminated as staples of many tool rooms, and it was not long ago that the very idea of doing so would have been laughable. As for more sophisticated computer numerical control (CNC) equipment, few shops have abandoned milling or turning in favor of additive technology, which is generally considered more of a complement than a rival to traditional processes.

That is the case for now, at least. An uncertain future provides good reason for shops of all stripes to stay abreast of additive technology developments like new material capabilities or faster processing of larger parts. However, the latest, most advanced systems are not always accessible or desirable in the near term (or ever, in some cases). In the meantime, savvy business owners cannot be distracted by curmudgeonly naysayers nor by zealous technological missionaries. Decisions must instead be informed by deep understanding of a technology’s current capabilities and limitations as well as the hurdles faced by the earliest experimenters and adopters.

In the November 1964 issue, such practical thinking is evident beyond Mr. Vogel’s column. The cover, touting the machining of the mechanical “brains” for the flight-control system of the XB-70A supersonic jet prototype, makes clear that this publication is dedicated to the most sophisticated and modern machining applications. However, a primary message of this particular 1960s aerospace application story was that NC was not for everyone. “Perhaps the most amazing” aspect about producing the flight-system components, the article states, was that most work was done on “rather conventional shop machines and grinders, with setup techniques and accurate gaging assuring the necessary precision.” Listed specifications included machining within 0.0002 inch for non-sensitive components and 0.0001 inch for others; flatness deviation of no more than 0.00005 inch on some parts; and axial deviation within 0.00001 inch on certain bearings.

The very next page debuted the first article in a four-part series on NC, but the tone was anything but breathless. Building on another series of NC articles published three years earlier in 1961, “Let’s Again Discuss Numerical Control” was presented as an “eat your vegetables” kind of refresher on a burgeoning technology that shops would ignore at their peril.“One of the first hurdles to the widespread acceptance of NC was a lack of comprehension about the concepts on which it is based” states the guest author of the first piece, which covered the importance of the Cartesian coordinate system for ensuring that “dimensioning language means precisely the same thing to the programmer as it does the design engineer, the draftsman and the setup man.”

Ensuring everyone involved in production operates from the same data interpreted the same way? Some things, it seems, never change. And when they do, shops eager to cast their gaze to the horizon should also be sure to keep one foot on the ground.  

Computerization Changes Everything

Mark Albert | Editorial Director

The proliferation of the computer numerical control (CNC) machining center in the late 1970s signaled the total eclipse of the manual machine tool in the following decade. Very few shops would still rely on standard, “conventional” machines for anything but toolroom work by the end of the 1980s. However, the rise of the computerized machine tool marked an even broader shift in machine shop operations. Computerization came to a wide range of other manufacturing functions (“applications” as we refer to them now) on the shop floor and in the front office.

For the first time, running the manufacturing business and running the production machines would be influenced by a single, powerful technological advance—the personal computer (PC), which was often called a microcomputer around that time. Also for the first time, our industry would be dependent on advances coming from outside the metalworking or manufacturing world. General hardware and software developers such as IBM and Apple Inc. were in the lead, while applications for industrial design and manufacturing followed closely in response. The umbrella term for these applications was clearly “CAD/CAM,” but CAD/CAM was essentially a collection of specific uses for digital technology that was emerging.

Just how prevalent and dominant CAD/CAM had become is strikingly evident in our September 1985 issue. Almost the entire magazine, it seems, is devoted to manufacturing software: computer-aided design (CAD); computer-aided manufacturing (CAM); material requirements planning (MRP); statistical process control (SPC) and other vital applications. However, the cover story, “A CAD/CAM Checklist,” is emblematic.

The content of this article, authored by Paul Olsen of GrafTek, was conveniently summarized on the cover itself. It is apparent that this article was directed to company management (that is, business owners), who were advised to consider how several departments within the company would coordinate or interact via the CAD/CAM system.

Inside the article, the author raises a number of additional management and technical issues (in a way that seems somewhat superficial and generalized to me today). Several are noteworthy, given the relevance of these same issues in the present. For example, exchange ability and interoperability were just as likely to be barriers in 1985 as they are now. The Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES), which had been introduced five years earlier, was cited as an important solution. Maintaining a CAD/CAM system with updates and new releases from the developer was mentioned as a discussion point. That is still true 30 years later. The idea of sharing data among applications via a centralized database earns only a few sentences in this article—the details of communication across a network are not discussed (at the time, most shop networks relied on serial ports and RS-232-C capability).

The article gives a glimpse of the state of computer technology in the mid-1980s. For example, it points out that 32-bit processors were displacing 16-bit products. 2D drafting had evolved into 3D wire frames, but solid modeling capability (available and recommended by the author) substantially upped the cost and system requirements, so it prompted this cautionary note:

Browsing the other articles and advertisements in this issue provides a much richer picture of the manufacturing software and hardware landscape of the time. IBM PC, XT and AT personal computers were vying with Apple Macintosh II and IIe models. Digital Equipment Corp., maker of the VAX and PDP-11 “minicomputers,” was also a major hardware supplier, as was Hewlett Packard. PC-DOS, MS-DOS and CP/M were in contention as operating systems. (Microsoft Windows, one of the early graphical user interfaces for PCs, would be released by the end of the year.) The 5-inch floppy disk was giving way to the 3.5-inch diskette (which, oddly, is still the universal icon for the “save” function in today’s software).

For machine shops, punched-paper-tape equipment and time-sharing for automatically programmed tool (APT) processing of NC programs were still around, but fading.

At Modern Machine Shop, editors were working with word-processing systems, and learning the hard way that frequently saving long documents to the disk was very, very important.  

Increasing Connectivity

Stephanie Hendrixson | Associate Editor

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: I am a millennial. I am part of the generation that has been influenced heavily by the rise of social media, smartphones and the internet. I like to think I have paid my dues: I remember passing handwritten notes and calling friends on landlines, and the first time I accessed the internet was via a dial-up connection. However, I cannot deny the growing presence of technology over my life span. Perhaps it is fitting that I landed the assignment of writing about the 2000s, a decade of increasing connectivity in both private life and the machine shop world.

The May 2006 issue cover story, titled “No Wires, No Worries,” is about Miller Welding & Machine’s experience installing a Wi-Fi network in 2005. Miller was not the first manufacturer to do so, nor was this issue the first time that Modern Machine Shop covered wireless networking in machine shop environments. However, the reason for Miller’s Brookville, Pennsylvania, shop to go wireless at precisely this moment was that wired connections to its machine tools had, quite literally, backfired: A lightning strike that hit its main plant in October 2004 destroyed circuit boards inside computer numerical control (CNC) units, leading to several days of downtime and thousands of dollars needed to get the machine tools back up and running. A wireless networking system, therefore, seemed like an appealing option.

The rise of wireless connectivity on the shop floor in the 2000s was perhaps the natural evolution of direct numeric control, which connects machine tools to a centrally located computer that stores and distributes part programs. Distributed numerical control followed, a similar setup in which a network of computers coordinates the operation of multiple machines, feeding programs into CNC memories where they can operate independently. Both networked concepts eventually came to be known as “DNC,” and it was only a matter of time before wires began to vanish from the equation.

At least for Miller, that was the case. The company had been on its way to implementing wired DNC before the lightning strike, but that event made cutting cords to machines a priority. So instead of hardwiring, the machine tools at the Brookville facility were equipped with wireless DNC devices to enable server access over Wi-Fi, by way of access points installed throughout the building.

Installation and setup were successful, but integrating Wi-Fi did not come without worry and concern: Would it be reliable? Fast enough? Secure?

Fortunately, even more than a decade ago, the answer to each of these questions was “yes.” At the time of print, Miller reported no problems with downloading numerical control (NC) programs wirelessly, and download speeds were adequate for its needs. Data encryption and other security measures kept NC programs safe from interception and Miller’s corporate network safe from attack.

Machine shops in 2018 have even better means of answering these questions. Reliability and speed have improved with more advanced hardware and software and faster internet connections. Shops today have their pick of network-ready equipment with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability. The MTConnect protocol, which rolled out in the later 2000s, has made data gathering and analysis easier. Data security is perhaps the most pressing issue today; though cyberattacks on machine shops are rare, the stakes remain high. Fortunately, measures such as hardware firewalls, encryption and even cybersecurity insurance policies can provide peace of mind about using Wi-Fi on the shop floor.

The cover story of this issue is not just about the promise of Wi-Fi, however. It is what Wi-Fi represents: connectivity. For a machine shop in the mid-2000s, connectivity meant capability to send NC programs anywhere in the building from a central file server; the ability to move machines at will without rewiring the entire network; and the opportunity to connect other devices—like a portable coordinate measuring machine—to the same network wirelessly.

For shops today, connectivity extends even further. Flip through a recent issue of Modern Machine Shop and you will see ads, product listings and case studies for everything from tool-vending machines that feed data back to enterprise resource planning systems to Bluetooth-enabled probes to smartphone apps that support round-the-clock machine monitoring. For better or worse, we are more connected now than ever before.

Celebrating 90 Years of Serving Manufacturing

Richard G. Kline | Chairman and CEO

A brief history of Modern Machine Shop, Gardner Business Media and our contribution to the industry.

With those words, my grandfather Don Gardner and his business partner Howard Campbell launched Modern Machine Shop magazine and also launched the company that became Gardner Business Media. Those words are prominently displayed in our corporate lobby in Cincinnati, Ohio, today, and they perfectly express our mission as a media company.

Don Gardner came from Monticello, Indiana, where his father owned a movie theater in nearby Delphi. Don attended Wabash College and worked early in his career as a salesman for newspapers, notably the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado. He moved to Cincinnati when he became Iron Age magazine’s Southwestern sales manager. Along the way, he met Howard Campbell, who was Midwestern editor for American Machinist magazine.

Don Gardner and Howard Campbell did two very innovative things: They started Modern Machine Shop as a digest-size magazine, which was very different from the 7- by 10-inch-magazine format at the time, and they distributed it free of charge to qualified individuals in metal- working plants. The driving force behind the magazine was, and still is, the content. Helping manufactures be more competitive, more productive and better able to produce quality products remains the cornerstone of the MMS brand.

In our 90 years, we have had six editors at the helm: Howard Campbell, Fred Vogel, Ken Gettelman, Tom Beard, Mark Albert and Peter Zelinski. This continuity of service has served us well. Each of these editors maintained a clear and consistent vision of our purpose and reason for being.

Second Generation

Modern Machine Shop publisher Gardner Business Media Inc. is a family business. Don Gardner had two daughters, and one of them, Helen, married my father, Richard S. Kline, who took over the company in 1947 when Don Gardner died. As a natural-born salesman, my father realized the value of content and was a big supporter of our editorial purpose. Also, following the advice of Ken Gettelman, he encouraged our attendance and efforts internationally. By that participation, we have been able to follow trends and make friendships that have served us well since technology and innovation come from all over the world now.

Third Generation

Helen and Richard S. Kline had four children: Margaret, Steve, Don and I, the oldest. My brother Don Kline died several years ago.

Margaret and Steve Kline are no longer involved in the business. My brothers and I each have two children, and five of Don Gardner’s six great grandchildren currently work at Gardner Business Media, all in key positions.

People sometimes ask me how I manage a company with five close relatives. My flip answer is that you have to pick them very carefully (like you really have a choice). I have been very fortunate in that all of them are smart and have found positions that meet their aptitudes and their needs.

Fourth Generation and Today’s Values

Our fourth generation agrees upon four foundation values that are important as Gardner Business Media grows and progresses:

•Run the business with integrity.
•Build a successful business.
•Make the work personally rewarding.
•Provide a fun environment.

These values are for all employees, not just family members. I would add that we work hard to treat customers, suppliers and each other with respect. When we make mistakes (and we do make them), we try hard to exceed our customers’ expectations. Often, we know about mistakes before customers do, and we “make good” by offering a solution that we hope far exceeds what they would ask for. If we do that, we end up with a customer who is not only appreciative, but has great loyalty moving forward.

My dad and Don Gardner believed that in any enterprise, the leader is wise to pick associates smarter than they are. Our employees would probably tell you that in my case, it wasn’t hard.

In any event, I have learned that smart people with different aptitudes and interests lead to a richer, more balanced company. I feel compelled to add that women comprise about 50 percent of our company in a variety of roles, many of which are leadership. These women add great value and richness to our business.

I hope you can tell I am very proud of our company and the contribution it has made to manufacturing. You can rest assured that we will continue to value content, and we will do our best to help our audience better understand technology, products, processes and trends that will affect and transform manufacturing.