Machining Operations You Might not have Seen

Machining is, in addition to all of its other virtues, just really cool. It’s OK to say that. Nobody here is entirely grown-up.

I think an aspect of what makes machining cool is the way that extremely precise tolerances—tolerances so fine that achieving them ought to be a grave and serious undertaking—are, in fact, realized by controlled interplays of machine motion that seem playful, like sculpture in motion. Machining is where industry and art come together to high-five one another.

A little bit of a reminder of that sense is what I found in a series of videos recently provided by TCI Precision. As a metals processor, TCI employs machining processes that most shops do not possess, and perhaps have not seen. I had not seen them before.

Getting a glimpse of a machining operation for the first time (and it’s just a glimpse—the video snippets are brief) reminded me of what it was like back when I saw and appreciated machining itself for the first time. Here are those videos, blanchard grinding, double disc grinding and duplex milling.