My dad was a gear metrology engineer and superintendent at GM for a few decades. I showed him this video and the accuracy of the 1800's micrometers astounded him.
As important as whitworth is to modern machinery and accuracy he was the cause of a major headache that lasted over a week where I work. I was a mechanic in a factory. I still work there, but I'm a supervisor now. Anyway, his odd thread pitch is what caused me a weeks worth of headaches. Most of the machines I worked on were either all standard or all metric, pretty common right? Well, one machine in particular had one thread that I couldn't figure out. I measured, re measured, checked my numbers, cross referenced them to my machinery's handbook and kept coming up empty handed. That is until I came to the pages about whitworth threads and my numbers started making sense. What I had on my hands was just that, a whitworth thread used because the component that went into it was sourced from somewhere that still uses it.
I've been a "mechanic" for some sixty years, Joseph Whitworth was a hero of mine almost immediately, as I ran across "Whitworth threads" pretty much immediately in "british machines". Maudsley was an incredible mechanic, teacher, and our machines today, largely came out of their efforts. I still enjoy the never ending learning from those men. Thanks!
Not going to lie, my wife stared at me like I was crazy when I told her I watched your first screw vid Screws, the early years. I have been waiting eagerly for each subsequent video since and I cannot wait to finish typing this and hit play! Thank you for the time and dedication you put into these videos!
How many Donald Trumps does it take to screw in a light bulb? We will never know because after he screws something he pays it $130,000 not to tell anyone.😉
About temperature influencing measurements: If you have one or two gauge blocks, you can theoretically correct for an unknown temperature. The catches are that you need trustworthy gauge blocks, they need to be made of the same material as you're measuring (or you need to know expansion coefficients and do some maths) and the temperature needs to stay constant throughout the measuring session.
As a BSME There were weeks of lectures on these subjects, plus classes in hands on machine tools and geometric dimensioning and tolerance. I have a textbook just on various screws, bolts plus various hardware.
That's my Whitworth Planer! Well, technically the still shot was of the Planer at Underfall Yard in Bristol, which is part owned by Bristol City Council and part by the Charity that is restoring all if the machines in the Councils City Dock Workshops. I used to be the Head Docks Engineer there until 2019, and I helped the charity's vlolunteer engineers & tinkerers get the Planer running again, still powered by the overhead drive belt. It still works well, and in fact was last used commercially to make the curved roller tracks for Junction Swing Bridge in Bristol, back in the late '70s! If you or anyone else gets the chance, definitely go & see it running - its amazing! Well done on another great video, keep them coming 🙂
I had the joy of seeing the lathes of both Maudslay and Whitworth on public display at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London in 1984. I spent my entire afternoon on their tools exhibit. The workmanship evident in these masterpieces that laid the principles by which machine tools were developed fascinated me. Thanks for this series.
I am truly impressed. I'm also 67, not that those two things are in any way connected. Great video! I am not a machinest, but my dad was and I inherited his tool chest. At least once or twice a month I find myself using one or more of those tools, and regretting I didn't spend more time soaking in his knowledge as well as begging him to explain how they worked. Sure, I've got that green book sitting there in that center drawer, mocking me, laughing at me while I read the strange, almost foreign words explaining complex theories and intricate drawings. In the end, it goes back in the drawer and I have to spend the rest of the day listening to the muffled laughter echoing off my shop walls. God bless the man that invented ear plugs.
I'll be 82 in two months. I came across this series last night only by chance while trying to find easy to follow explanations on the subject of reading sophisticated vernier calipers in inches and millimeters. I had used a crude one in woodshop in the 1950's. I'm currently planning to rework one 8-32 inch machine screw down to a 5-40 by hand file and make sure I don't later accidently use a tap drill of the wrong diameter. Trying to make a late Lancaster flintlock rifle. My grandson graduates from undergraduate college this quarter, and is planning on a computer specialty grad degree. He works part time in same shop as his dad: a metal fabrication plant that uses machining computers. Maybe one day he will inherit my crude collection of curious calipers. When he was a kid he saw one of my mechanical typewriters and asked what it was. I gave my son the most advanced mechanical slide rule ever made b/f they became obsolete.
I'm so glad you made another video. For quite a long time I worried you'd disappeared into the UA-cam Ether never to be seen again :) Thanks for an informative and well-illustrated addition.
What? A new Machine Thinking video? [loud crashing as I drop everything and dive for the "play" button] I've never been moved to supported another channel, but when your mentioned "additional content" for your Patreon subscribers, I jumped at the chance, I was signed up before you finished your pitch. Machine Thinking is, hands down the best channel on UA-cam. Not only is your content truly historically significant, meticulously researched, and fascinating, you're somehow able to present it in away that is accessible to regular people yet no less interesting and informative for people who know a little something about this stuff. But for me, the real magic is happens when you discuss your own sense of awe and reverence when in the presence of these machines. It reminds me of how Carl Sagan used to discuss his feelings about the Universe. Thank you so much for everything you do to share these videos with the world.
Not just in the UK but I believe BSP threads are still used in much of Asia, Australia, NZ, and South Africa as well. The 7/16" Whitworth hex head size is also still universally used in scaffolding in the UK.
I never knew that and I deal with a bit of witwprth on old farm machinery Bsp is common world wide in hydraulics and other pipe fittings But mostly as European exports I personally hate bsp straight fittings Theyre a real nuisance and prone to leaking compared to the American oring boss that does the same job Bsp taper works OK and is offern transferable to NPT in a pinch Australian btw so no bias either way I rekon JIC is te best hydraulic fitting
Demonstrating engagement! But seriously, so fascinating, it's almost like a hidden history of how our world came about. Thank you for imbuing such a ubiquitous thing with a sense of magic.
Always an instant watch for me. This series is one of the best things I've seen on youtube. It really makes me think about all the different ways that culture and civilization has built itself up iteratively.
Hi. I really like your videos. I have a suggestion on how you present some of this information. A key issue that is not discussed is screw pitch variation, and the relationship between a screw's pitch and its relating rotational with linear motion. If you could add a segment on pitch variability and why that's such a big deal for accurate screws. If you get time, you should also look into early pitch-correction devices - they had intricate systems of cams that followed the screw and adjusted the cutting operation in-situ to create more accurate threads. If you give me some time I can dig up the details on that mechanism.
16:40 I stumbled across this video completely by accident. Imagine my surprise when, at the time stamp shown, up pops an image from Moore Special Tool Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. My father worked as a machinist for many years there, and I had the pleasure of meeting Richard "Dick" Moore himself. My dad was still working for them when he suddenly passed away back in 1975. He had just come home from work about 15 minutes before. He always spoke so highly of MST and he loved his job. Thanks for posting this and bringing back so many good memories.
Wonderful vid. I build portable desktop CMM's, and I've made a bunch of r&d and occasional production parts when we have supplier issues (tiny company blues) with the help of some good ol' eighty year old lead screws in our great WWII Monarch lathe. Accurate as all heck.
These videos are AMAZING!!! You were absolutely correct when you said "...most people don't think about the screws that hold..." their entire lives together... And to be able to trace the origins of screws all the way back to the 13th/14th centuries (?) is even more amazing, to me... Thank you so much for your time... 6 out of 5 stars...
Incredible series, a much deeper dive into the origins of precision than I ever received in school. BTW, I've actually used a Moore jig bore grinder, and Moore inspection machine, state of the art back when they were made.
I don't usually comment on anything here. But your videos are absolutely fantastic, I'm learning a lot, and I'm using what I learn from you to teach my novice tech students. You have great insight, and way more skill than I can dream of. Please make more videos, you both inspire and teach me to make more interesting material for my students. You're a very good commuticator.
Something I've kept wondering through this entire series of videos is: how did people go from handmade, eyeball-precision screws to more precise screws? The screw-cutting machines you've shown so far each rely on the precision of a master screw to function, so how do you increase the precision of that master screw?
Endless. Iteration. You make something that can make something else that's roughly precise to an inch. Then you iterate and make it more and more repeatable. The closer to that "perfect" inch you can get, then what you're actually doing is getting closer and closer by fractions of an inch. Once you have that down, you build a machine that's precise to fractions of an inch. Which, of course, means that you're _actually_ dialing it in by fractions of a fraction of an inch. You keep going, getting more and more precise, making tools that can measure and verify your manufacturing precision to tighter and more replicable tolerances. You start out with something like pottery, which is largely done by "eyeballing it". Then you might move onto something more precise like stone masonry, which requires more precision (unless you like crooked buildings). Then maybe onto very simple wooden machines, like windmills and watermills which _do_ have gears but also have a lot of slop due to wood's inherent dimensional instability (it shrinks and expands with humidity and wetness, and warps over time, etc...). You can also start to experiment with things like early brass gears (antikythera mechanism, clocks, etc...) which could be made by geometrically dividing circles and using ratios of an arbitrary starting measurement to make work and then slowly and painstakingly removing material until the tolerances are tight enough to function. But then you need more precise and repeatable measurements for something like arming an entire battalion with muskets, because now you need hundreds or thousands of muskets that are all within tolerance to one another to be able to have standard ammunition that won't have too much of a gap in the barrel to not fire correctly or too tight of a fit which could cause the barrel to jam and explode (if it fits at all!). Then you step things up to an entirely new level when you get into interchangeable parts. People, I think, assume that the accomplishment of "interchangeable parts" was just thinking of the concept of being able to have, well, _interchangeable parts._ But that's not _at all_ what the accomplishment was. The real technological breakthrough was being able to have measurement standards and manufacturing techniques be precise and repeatable enough that it was _possible_ to be able to sit down and just make something as simple as _a screw_ over and over again to fit into the hole in another part that _might not even be made in the same building, city, or country that you're in_ and have it be _guaranteed_ to fit. These innovations happened _because_ of these precision breakthroughs, and similarly, these precision breakthroughs were pushed forward because of the demands of technological innovation in an effort to make products more affordable to a mass market and/ or to undercut the competition. They feed on one another. To put this into context, most machine parts require levels of precision so tiny that a human being _cannot_ determine these measurements without precision instruments. It is not possible, in most cases, to be able to tell a part that's within tolerance from one that is not. The extent of mass-manufactured precision that we're at right now is in _nanometers,_ and you see it in semiconductors. We're in the 7nm - 5nm range, right now, and we're approaching the limits of what of our current technology can _physically_ be shrunk down to. These are tolerances that are so tiny that you cannot measure them with any _physical_ instrument (like a micrometer), because we are now measuring these things at _atomic_ scales. We have to use things like electron microscopes and highly-specialized wafer probes (that use some sort of laser to check the refractive index or something like that of the chips by some mind-melting process I don't really understand) to actually validate them. But we didn't get to 7nm by just waking up one day in the 70's and saying, "you know what, why are we bothering with all of this _10µm_ scale crap? We should be, like, making them way smaller; we should just jump a couple orders of magnitude and make them _smaller!"_ No, we started with making transistors that were 10µm, then moved to 6µm, then 3µm, and so on and so forth over the last few _decades._ Tirelessly iterating to make these things smaller and smaller, and rearranging them so we could fit more of them in an area, and inventing new processes to layer them more efficiently, and etc... The exact same thing has been happening pretty much since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Early steam engines were sloppy as hell, with a lot of inefficiency from gaps around the pistons, friction from these loose fits causing steel to rub on steel, etc... You _could_ make extremely precise, clockwork machines with tight tolerances, but this was impractically expensive for machines that needed to be reliably run in less-than-ideal conditions and be somewhat repairable in the field. This is also the real reason why guns took so long to take off after the discovery of gunpowder. We in the west understood the concept and knew _how_ to make a tube go boom pretty quickly after we found out about gunpowder. The _first_ problem was figuring out a simple and reliable firing mechanism, but the second, _bigger_ problem was then figuring out how to make _fifty thousand of them._ We _had_ wheel-lock muskets before flint-locks, but they basically required a watch-maker's expertise to craft a one-of-a-kind gun, it was horribly expensive, they were finicky in the best of conditions and just generally not suited for the mass production capabilities of the time. And then to get a simple flint-lock gun required that a standard pattern be designed so that hundreds of different craftsmen gunsmiths could build _the same gun_ over and over again in many different workshops. The problem wasn't the _concept,_ it was figuring out a relatively cheap design and then how to make the same thing over and over and over with some degree of precision. Want a more common and recent example? Go actually stand next to a classic muscle car from the 60's or 70's while it's running. Notice how it _reeks_ of gasoline? While part of this is from gas not being leaded anymore and many of these cars not having emissions control and catalytic converters, a lot of it is also just because the tolerances were so much looser that gasoline vapor _just fucking leaks out of the engine._ The same is somewhat true of the sound. That's the sound of inefficiency (and pollution). It's a cool-ass sound, but there's a reason cars don't sound like that anymore (except diesels, but that's a different thing lol). A lot of the reason these older cars run the way they do is because they're less efficient and turn a lot more of that energy into noise and vibration. Improvements in manufacturing gradually lead to much tighter tolerances which lead to more efficient and reliable engines, until we get to today where a fairly average commuter, 4-banger hatchback has more horsepower, is lighter, more efficient, safer, less-polluting, longer-lasting, and more reliable than some _supercars_ from 50 years ago. And many newer gasoline cars _are almost silent while doing all that._ So that's how it happened. From _a lot of work_ over _hundreds of years_ by people who were constantly toiling away just to improve precision by fractions of a fraction of an inch to make _something_ a tiny bit better, cheaper, or easier to make.
Wow this was an awesome presentation, than,s for making it! I just took measurements for granted until this. I will never look at measurements the same again !
Great video. The fact that one invention was so influential, reminds of the 1000s upon 1000s of ingenious discoveries and inventions that made the cellphone possible. What an unreal marvel it is.
Just discovered this channel, and I know I'm going to be waiting for the next one every day after I watch through the whole of your channel! I've always been fascinated by the most minimal things and most commonplace miracles we have, and still missed how fucking important screws are.
I love the way you explain things in a way that I can pretend to understand. Too bad I can't keep the details in my head long enough to explain to someone else why I know that someone works the way it does.
Don't feel bad about "forgetting" the details. Every time we learn something new, a bit gets stored where we can access it easily, the rest goes deeper down. It can feel like you forgot and the time is wasted. Then a year later you learn something new and you can link it to that previous knowledge in the back of your head. Those beautifull "ahah" moments. From that point on, you truly acquired the knowledge and can explain it to others. Its the background to the famous quote about truly understanding something when you can explain it to your grandmother. The fact that you cannot explain it yet means that you are on the frontier of your knowledge, busy day learning new stuff, and I respect that immensely.
Measurement is at the heart of all processes and the accuracy of that measurement is the driver of repeatability. I was discussing this with a friend who has a very old and rare Winchester rifle and I explained to him that improvements in manufacturing usually came from necessity being the mother of invention. People like Winchester invented and made the machines that allowed him to make a better and more accurate rifle in less time and less money and screw-based machines were at the heart of it. But One thing I never lose sight of is that way back in the beginning someone had to make the parts of the first machines by hand with crude tools like files and oil stones and such so that machines could replace what they did by hand but do it much faster and in many cases more accurately. Then those machines made the machines that drove further improvements in capability, accuracy, and cost. That process continues to this very day.
I love these videos, it’s fascinating to me as a machinist where the industry came from and there’s not enough informative videos out there like these, I really enjoy yours and always look forward to your next ones, thank you for the great videos
MT, interesting video, I'm a home hobby machinist, I'd known most of what you've presented, but it's useful to have the information presented in an organized and coherent manner. Thanks for your efforts.
Brilliant video, I enjoyed it immensely! Though, the Swede in me I missed the Swedish connection with precision measurement of CE Johansson. If you want to do a followup video looking at him, his gauge blocks, collaboration with Henry Ford and the high precision CEJ invention the mikrokator, hit me up and we can collab! 😊
Thank you for the link! Because of videos like your we started a shop with kids and are tinkering with Chinese machines. Thank you for the history and inspiration!
that's awesome, it always makes me happy to hear about kids getting interested in machining and engineering. I hope you guys have allot of fun and make some cool projects.
When people ask me what I do, kI often tell them that I make the things, that make the things. Specifically I'm a mold maker but I also do general manual machining. Since I work in tenths, all of my instruments have that resolution and while not cheap, it still often boggles my mind that I can measure something like an eyelash and know my measurement is not only accurate but done mechanically (I leave them fancy digital micrometers to the kids). Great video, thanks for the research and now I have to figure out how to get to England so I can drag people into the museum and make them listen to how cool this stuff is.
I've seen mechanical Swiss screw machines in action, in practical use, at a manufacturing company in Santa Clara, CA. It had cams and followers and arms, and it made screws faster than a modern CNC screw machine. It didn't look that fast, but the tooling was up close, whereas a CNC screw machine has a longer distance to travel before it can change tools. And there's the tool change time itself. I tried to find video of such a machine online, but couldn't find any. It's a marvel to watch, and you get a sense of the mechanical genius of it's inventor, though realizing that what I was watching was a derivative of the original.
From personal experience, Whitworth threads were still being used on some products in the UK in the 1980's. Most likely to use up old stock! I owned a 1983 Landrover Series 3, Stage-1 V8, that had both Whitworth and Imperial Standard threads. Had to buy a set of Whitworth spanners from eBay just to work on the thing!
I love the extremely rough, last-minute clearance cut-outs at the ends of the rear triangular way on Maudslay's screw cutting lathe. THAT'S prototype engineering and manufacturing - at it's most basic level! Also love your videos.
Another amazing video. As soon as I wondered about temperature impacting the results, sure enough, you brought it up. Curious if we might see a video studying lathes that use air bearings in temp controlled environments? Thanks again.
During my apprenticeship, I had this moment where I suddenly realised how much more precise we can measure, that was when I first got to play around with a 0.001mm micrometre and I measured my own hair... realising it's way thicker than I ever thought... after that, I went into the insane world of sub-micron machining with lapping and it again blew my mind how precise we can machine things if you just take the time and have to will to do it... hitting 0.1mm tolerances now feels like sloppy work :D
A couple of years ago I saw some MT videos and got great value out of them. Because I didn't bookmark them or subscribe, eventually YT stopped recommending them. Recently I have been thinking a lot about the videos I was watching years ago, which YT is no longer recommending to me. I knew there were a series of videos about screws... Anyway, glad to be back on the MT track.
The thumbscrew on the thimble has a smaller knurled part, that is the spring loaded ratchet. It should be used when taking a measurement. Using the thimble to achieve measurement and not the ratchet would give inconsistent readings.
Could you explain this further? Sorry, I'm not a native english speaker but I used to use micrometers daily in my former job so I am very curious in what you mean :)
having used ratcheted and still mics, ive always gotten more accurate results by using the locked part and using "feel". the ratchets put too much pressure and read small imo
@@thepsychobilly88 When you measure a part with a micrometer, you squeeze the part between the jaws of the micrometer. Using the spring-loaded/ratchet mechanism to turn the micrometer always applies the same torque to the micrometer, and will cause the same amount of compression on the part being measured; if you turn the micrometer directly by the dial, you may end up applying more torque, or less torque, and the measurements will be inconsistent.
@@Kineth1 Aah, yes! I understand what you mean now 👍👍 I was aware of the spring loaded mechanism but I wasn't sure if you were talking about that or something else that I might have missed. Sorry for the confusion! Your explanation is very good and very helpful thou so I hope more people see it, it's well written and easy to understand, Kudos! :)
Very nice video. Thank you. Side note: Personal “around the house” homeowner maintenance experience in s 60yo residence has given me tremendous appreciation for whatever technology made the manufacture of Phillips head screws feasible and contributed to the prevalent use of Phillips head screws in lieu of flat head screws in more recent times. Ha.
Odd! I absolutely hate phillips head because of its tendency to cam out, I try to use hex screws everywhere I can, usually they're not much more expensive
@@yyunko7764 The History Guy has covered screws and screwdrivers (ua-cam.com/video/R-mDqKtivuI/v-deo.html), worth your time. Camming out in Phillips screws is intentional to prevent overdriving.
Great video as usual! How amazing to have the Palmer and B&S in your hand. Another video on how those hyper precise screws are actually made (beyond the intuitive knowledge that your can gear down masters with clever backlash control) would be great to see. Definitely do one on Whitworth. I grew up fixing Land Rovers made in the 60’s and it’s all AF or Whit.
Far from a complete explanation. But enough to get point across. You would be surprised at how much u don't know about using a mic and associated devices ( snap gauges, gauge blocks, just to start) there are volumes of books on the subject of prescion measure. In fact science still isn't sure what forces allow you to wring gauge blocks together. Allegedly. Lol
Read Moore's book , Holes, Contours and Surfaces. You can purchase it and also find it PDF on line. The Moore jig grinder was feature here in the video.
@@glennschemitsch8341 besides the fact that I don't see how you could manufacture a lead screw using a grinder, the problem is the same: with this machines you can't produce a precision higher than the precision of their lead screw, since every defect in the lead screws is transfered 1:1 to your piece...
I discovered Whitworth threads while trying to machine the interior thread for an espresso machine pressure gauge -- It turns out the thread was a BSPP ("British Standard Pipe Parallel", 55-deg Whitworth) thread which is apparenly most common for these types of gauges. As a complete newbie, trying to grind my own very small, 55-deg single point, inside tooling...I failed. I bought a tap but will never forget the difference between Whitworth 55-deg and standard 60-deg threads. Awesome video. Thanks for filling in the knowledge background.
The end product is one thing, the brain power to make them is another, these people are Goliath's of world, Titans using only primitive tools. What could these people produce if they were alive today?
It has been decades ago since I last time used a mechanical micrometer. I know that I managed to get very good precision using my vernier caliper, although I needed to to do more readings. Of course using a proper micrometer gave more consistent results, but for all the practical purposes, I was able to measure to one thousandth of a millimeter and was wrong only withing plus or minus 2 thousands when compared to multiple micrometer readings. I never needed that much precision tough. EDIT: Now I am not sure if I was not bragging too much, because what I wrote calls for some proof and I do not have a micrometer at hand to test my claims. I apologize if anyone felt mislead or offended.
I vaguely remember learning mathematical methods to getting accurate results from ordinary instruments by taking 10 measurements, moving the measuring instrument (whether a caliper or a micrometer) back and forth between each measurement. I ultimately went into a different career, but I think that's how high end digital calipers and micrometers work these days, with a cable connecting to a ordinary laptop computer.
I have a question regarding Maudslay and I'd be thankful if someone would try to answer my it. :D How exactly does one get the first lead screw, which you can put into the screw cutting lathe ? Do you have to make it by hand ? And wouldn't that make it imprecise and thus all other screws manufactured with this lead screw too ? Where would you start here ? (If I wrote this question to complicated, then I'm very sorry, it basically boils down to: Where does the first precision screw come from, without a screw cutting lathe to manufacture it with)
I don't know how the first lead screws were made, but I think I can present a good guess. One thing that can be made to high precision from scratch is a set of extremely flat stone surfaces. You need to start with more than two. If you have just two stone slabs, and you grind them against each other, you may end up with one concave and the other convex. If you have a set of at least three, and you keep swapping them out then over the course of a lot of grinding you end up with stone slabs that are flat to very high precision. The slabs have made each other perfectly flat. The perfectly flat stone surfaces allow you to manufacture sets of gage blocks, because the flat surface enable making blocks with surfaces that are *parallel* to high precision. Being able to verify surfaces being parallel moves the whole process forward. Let's say you have a single 1 inch gage block that you will be using as your reference. You make half inch gage blocks as follows: you make two gage blocks that satisfy the following two demands: - They are exactly the same size *as each other*. - Stacked together they stack up to exactly the height of the reference 1 inch. The micrometer that you use to compare the gage blocks only needs to *repeat* at very high reliability. Even if the micrometer cannot *measure* accurately yet, being able to verify that two gage blocks are exactly the *same* size is sufficient to move the whole process forward The set of gage blocks will allow you to calibrate instruments/machines you manufactured. Thread can also be cut with a mill. It takes a specialized milling machine, (or auxillary tool), that allows you to maintain a precise ratio of axial rotation of the workpiece and advancing the workpiece. Thread has an integer number of windings per unit of length. So a special thread milling machine setup can be built with worm gears, such that the axial rotation and advancing is mechanically coupled in the desired ratio. If that worm gear setup has some slop the resulting lead screw will have local imperfections, but slop or no slop, the worm gear *mechanical coupling* of axial rotation and advancing ensures that the thread pitch will be overall consistent. So even if the worm gear setup has slop the process as a whole can still be moved forward.
I've done a lot of research on this and there are several methods. I wanted to talk about it i this one but I chose to keep it focused but I DID briefly show Maudslay's Screw Originating Machine that uses the inclined knife method to make uniform threads soft material. Look it up!
thank you...! a youtube content creator who is honest about the annoyance of mid-roll ads...! i am not a machinist but i come from a mechanical background and enjoy videos like yours and other machinist like blondihacks... i think a lot of youtube content makers are under the false impression that mid-roll ads increase their bottom line... if anything, it increases the bottom line of youtube (google)...! i did not know the screw had such a fascinating history...! thank you again for a great video on the history of precision screws... 👍😎
The Whitworth thread standards are absolutely still relevant today. The US military used Whitworth threads until the early 80s. I just had an F14 component I modeled up for a machine shop full of Whitworths threads. They will be making those parts for the next 5 years.
By what you showed it should be fairly easy to make a hand heald micrometer able to measure 1/10 to 1/100 of a mm at home just starting with a well made finely threaded rod and nuts. I think I will try one day. Very interesting and informative video, well done.
Moore tool was right near my Dad's boat repair shop and some of the workers there were customers, I remember my Dad telling me , they made the machines that made the machines ! , some of the machinists there made us some special tools for repairing outdrives maybe 40 years ago, like Jewelry ! Bridgeport used to make everything , now ,pretty much gone.sad
Great video and storytelling! I recently read an article about some of these early precision developments in "Home Shop Machinist" magazine, and I wanted to see more! This video is it! Thanks. At 17:40, the edge / rim of the dial plate sure looks like it has worm-gear-like grooves. I wonder if Watt had the main screw engage the rim of that disc in an earlier version, but then reused it as the dial face? But looking closer, I think I see the outer edge of a similar disc parallel to this disc, is actually what moves the sliding block, which is not how it appears to work in the earlier animation. Guess I need to watch your other video 🙂
You are the first person to shed light on the question that plagued me throughout my life, vis a vi, How did modern man arrive at this ability? One can easily be flooded with political history, Science history, Music history, Etc,etc,etc, Never have I found industrial history, and had long resigned of the possibility that it might exist, concluding that all record of such had been relegated to the scrap heap of human history. This video was somehow in my suggestions and is a breath of restored hope. Thank you so much. I subscribed, by the way
Thanks for the shout out!
Machine thinking is so much cooler
Destin! You guys are both awesome
I found this channel because of you. Thank you Destin
Same here, Destin brought me here
both are great channels
My dad was a gear metrology engineer and superintendent at GM for a few decades. I showed him this video and the accuracy of the 1800's micrometers astounded him.
As important as whitworth is to modern machinery and accuracy he was the cause of a major headache that lasted over a week where I work. I was a mechanic in a factory. I still work there, but I'm a supervisor now. Anyway, his odd thread pitch is what caused me a weeks worth of headaches. Most of the machines I worked on were either all standard or all metric, pretty common right? Well, one machine in particular had one thread that I couldn't figure out. I measured, re measured, checked my numbers, cross referenced them to my machinery's handbook and kept coming up empty handed. That is until I came to the pages about whitworth threads and my numbers started making sense. What I had on my hands was just that, a whitworth thread used because the component that went into it was sourced from somewhere that still uses it.
Wait, what still uses Whitworth threads?!
@@garethfuller2700 Old BSA motorcycles for one.
oof
I would be very curious to know what prompted the change away from Whitworth threads, how is the modern standard thread better?
It's still relatively easy to buy Whitworth tap & die sets
I've been a "mechanic" for some sixty years, Joseph Whitworth was a hero of mine almost immediately, as I ran across "Whitworth threads" pretty much immediately in "british machines". Maudsley was an incredible mechanic, teacher, and our machines today, largely came out of their efforts. I still enjoy the never ending learning from those men. Thanks!
Not going to lie, my wife stared at me like I was crazy when I told her I watched your first screw vid Screws, the early years. I have been waiting eagerly for each subsequent video since and I cannot wait to finish typing this and hit play!
Thank you for the time and dedication you put into these videos!
it takes a special kind of person to get excited about videos like these.
@@justindunlap1235 We're all "special" here :)
Same here!
Indeed. These videos are riveting.
How many Donald Trumps does it take to screw in a light bulb?
We will never know because after he screws something he pays it $130,000 not to tell anyone.😉
Immediate watch. This channel almost justifies UA-cam on its own. 👍
Or maybe the whole internet 🙃
Oh yes 👏
About temperature influencing measurements:
If you have one or two gauge blocks, you can theoretically correct for an unknown temperature. The catches are that you need trustworthy gauge blocks, they need to be made of the same material as you're measuring (or you need to know expansion coefficients and do some maths) and the temperature needs to stay constant throughout the measuring session.
As a BSME There were weeks of lectures on these subjects, plus classes in hands on machine tools and geometric dimensioning and tolerance. I have a textbook just on various screws, bolts plus various hardware.
That's a cool hack!
"Nobody breathes for a few minutes, I'm going to measure a gauge block!"
That's my Whitworth Planer! Well, technically the still shot was of the Planer at Underfall Yard in Bristol, which is part owned by Bristol City Council and part by the Charity that is restoring all if the machines in the Councils City Dock Workshops. I used to be the Head Docks Engineer there until 2019, and I helped the charity's vlolunteer engineers & tinkerers get the Planer running again, still powered by the overhead drive belt. It still works well, and in fact was last used commercially to make the curved roller tracks for Junction Swing Bridge in Bristol, back in the late '70s! If you or anyone else gets the chance, definitely go & see it running - its amazing! Well done on another great video, keep them coming 🙂
That's an amazing connection! I'd love to know more. Can you reach out to me at machinethinking.co/contact ?
I had the joy of seeing the lathes of both Maudslay and Whitworth on public display at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London in 1984. I spent my entire afternoon on their tools exhibit. The workmanship evident in these masterpieces that laid the principles by which machine tools were developed fascinated me.
Thanks for this series.
I am truly impressed. I'm also 67, not that those two things are in any way connected. Great video! I am not a machinest, but my dad was and I inherited his tool chest. At least once or twice a month I find myself using one or more of those tools, and regretting I didn't spend more time soaking in his knowledge as well as begging him to explain how they worked. Sure, I've got that green book sitting there in that center drawer, mocking me, laughing at me while I read the strange, almost foreign words explaining complex theories and intricate drawings. In the end, it goes back in the drawer and I have to spend the rest of the day listening to the muffled laughter echoing off my shop walls. God bless the man that invented ear plugs.
I'll be 82 in two months. I came across this series last night only by chance while trying to find easy to follow explanations on the subject of reading sophisticated vernier calipers in inches and millimeters. I had used a crude one in woodshop in the 1950's. I'm currently planning to rework one 8-32 inch machine screw down to a 5-40 by hand file and make sure I don't later accidently use a tap drill of the wrong diameter. Trying to make a late Lancaster flintlock rifle. My grandson graduates from undergraduate college this quarter, and is planning on a computer specialty grad degree. He works part time in same shop as his dad: a metal fabrication plant that uses machining computers. Maybe one day he will inherit my crude collection of curious calipers. When he was a kid he saw one of my mechanical typewriters and asked what it was. I gave my son the most advanced mechanical slide rule ever made b/f they became obsolete.
I'm so glad you made another video. For quite a long time I worried you'd disappeared into the UA-cam Ether never to be seen again :) Thanks for an informative and well-illustrated addition.
What? A new Machine Thinking video?
[loud crashing as I drop everything and dive for the "play" button]
I've never been moved to supported another channel, but when your mentioned "additional content" for your Patreon subscribers, I jumped at the chance, I was signed up before you finished your pitch.
Machine Thinking is, hands down the best channel on UA-cam. Not only is your content truly historically significant, meticulously researched, and fascinating, you're somehow able to present it in away that is accessible to regular people yet no less interesting and informative for people who know a little something about this stuff. But for me, the real magic is happens when you discuss your own sense of awe and reverence when in the presence of these machines. It reminds me of how Carl Sagan used to discuss his feelings about the Universe.
Thank you so much for everything you do to share these videos with the world.
12:44 - Whitworth form is still used for BSP (British Standard Pipe) threads - very much still commonplace in the UK at least for many applications.
Not just in the UK but I believe BSP threads are still used in much of Asia, Australia, NZ, and South Africa as well.
The 7/16" Whitworth hex head size is also still universally used in scaffolding in the UK.
I never knew that and I deal with a bit of witwprth on old farm machinery
Bsp is common world wide in hydraulics and other pipe fittings
But mostly as European exports
I personally hate bsp straight fittings
Theyre a real nuisance and prone to leaking compared to the American oring boss that does the same job
Bsp taper works OK and is offern transferable to NPT in a pinch
Australian btw so no bias either way
I rekon JIC is te best hydraulic fitting
@@fowletm1992 Whitworth thread is still the standard for photo tripods, which is quite annoying for camera makers...
Brilliant video thanks.
Did you notice that early newspaper item about spiders said they are insects!
BSP (tapered and parallel) still got em in USA and yep, still Whitworth.
Thank you for not polluting your videos with ads!!! 🤠👍
Love the fact that an instrument I use daily to measure has its roots in the golden age of engineering. Great video as always
There’s a great book about this and other original precision measurements called ‘The Perfectionists’
its a good book, but its a bit british-centric
Read it a few years ago, awesome book!
Thanks I’m looking for some good books to read in between these amazing videos.
Also published under the title “Exactly”. It’s a fascinating read
thanks for this going to give it a read.
Demonstrating engagement! But seriously, so fascinating, it's almost like a hidden history of how our world came about. Thank you for imbuing such a ubiquitous thing with a sense of magic.
Almost?
I love your videos man. 3 years old and still such high quality. Its fun peering into the mind of a highly knowledgeable machinist
Always an instant watch for me. This series is one of the best things I've seen on youtube. It really makes me think about all the different ways that culture and civilization has built itself up iteratively.
Coming back to watch this video again, because it’s that dang good.
Hi. I really like your videos. I have a suggestion on how you present some of this information. A key issue that is not discussed is screw pitch variation, and the relationship between a screw's pitch and its relating rotational with linear motion. If you could add a segment on pitch variability and why that's such a big deal for accurate screws. If you get time, you should also look into early pitch-correction devices - they had intricate systems of cams that followed the screw and adjusted the cutting operation in-situ to create more accurate threads. If you give me some time I can dig up the details on that mechanism.
16:40 I stumbled across this video completely by accident. Imagine my surprise when, at the time stamp shown, up pops an image from Moore Special Tool Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. My father worked as a machinist for many years there, and I had the pleasure of meeting Richard "Dick" Moore himself. My dad was still working for them when he suddenly passed away back in 1975. He had just come home from work about 15 minutes before. He always spoke so highly of MST and he loved his job. Thanks for posting this and bringing back so many good memories.
He is still alive,
Thank you for making great content.
Always the highlight of my day when one of your videos comes out
Wonderful vid. I build portable desktop CMM's, and I've made a bunch of r&d and occasional production parts when we have supplier issues (tiny company blues) with the help of some good ol' eighty year old lead screws in our great WWII Monarch lathe. Accurate as all heck.
These videos are AMAZING!!! You were absolutely correct when you said "...most people don't think about the screws that hold..." their entire lives together... And to be able to trace the origins of screws all the way back to the 13th/14th centuries (?) is even more amazing, to me... Thank you so much for your time... 6 out of 5 stars...
Incredible series, a much deeper dive into the origins of precision than I ever received in school. BTW, I've actually used a Moore jig bore grinder, and Moore inspection machine, state of the art back when they were made.
I don't usually comment on anything here. But your videos are absolutely fantastic, I'm learning a lot, and I'm using what I learn from you to teach my novice tech students. You have great insight, and way more skill than I can dream of.
Please make more videos, you both inspire and teach me to make more interesting material for my students. You're a very good commuticator.
Something I've kept wondering through this entire series of videos is: how did people go from handmade, eyeball-precision screws to more precise screws? The screw-cutting machines you've shown so far each rely on the precision of a master screw to function, so how do you increase the precision of that master screw?
Endless. Iteration. You make something that can make something else that's roughly precise to an inch. Then you iterate and make it more and more repeatable. The closer to that "perfect" inch you can get, then what you're actually doing is getting closer and closer by fractions of an inch. Once you have that down, you build a machine that's precise to fractions of an inch. Which, of course, means that you're _actually_ dialing it in by fractions of a fraction of an inch. You keep going, getting more and more precise, making tools that can measure and verify your manufacturing precision to tighter and more replicable tolerances.
You start out with something like pottery, which is largely done by "eyeballing it". Then you might move onto something more precise like stone masonry, which requires more precision (unless you like crooked buildings). Then maybe onto very simple wooden machines, like windmills and watermills which _do_ have gears but also have a lot of slop due to wood's inherent dimensional instability (it shrinks and expands with humidity and wetness, and warps over time, etc...). You can also start to experiment with things like early brass gears (antikythera mechanism, clocks, etc...) which could be made by geometrically dividing circles and using ratios of an arbitrary starting measurement to make work and then slowly and painstakingly removing material until the tolerances are tight enough to function. But then you need more precise and repeatable measurements for something like arming an entire battalion with muskets, because now you need hundreds or thousands of muskets that are all within tolerance to one another to be able to have standard ammunition that won't have too much of a gap in the barrel to not fire correctly or too tight of a fit which could cause the barrel to jam and explode (if it fits at all!).
Then you step things up to an entirely new level when you get into interchangeable parts. People, I think, assume that the accomplishment of "interchangeable parts" was just thinking of the concept of being able to have, well, _interchangeable parts._ But that's not _at all_ what the accomplishment was. The real technological breakthrough was being able to have measurement standards and manufacturing techniques be precise and repeatable enough that it was _possible_ to be able to sit down and just make something as simple as _a screw_ over and over again to fit into the hole in another part that _might not even be made in the same building, city, or country that you're in_ and have it be _guaranteed_ to fit. These innovations happened _because_ of these precision breakthroughs, and similarly, these precision breakthroughs were pushed forward because of the demands of technological innovation in an effort to make products more affordable to a mass market and/ or to undercut the competition. They feed on one another. To put this into context, most machine parts require levels of precision so tiny that a human being _cannot_ determine these measurements without precision instruments. It is not possible, in most cases, to be able to tell a part that's within tolerance from one that is not.
The extent of mass-manufactured precision that we're at right now is in _nanometers,_ and you see it in semiconductors. We're in the 7nm - 5nm range, right now, and we're approaching the limits of what of our current technology can _physically_ be shrunk down to. These are tolerances that are so tiny that you cannot measure them with any _physical_ instrument (like a micrometer), because we are now measuring these things at _atomic_ scales. We have to use things like electron microscopes and highly-specialized wafer probes (that use some sort of laser to check the refractive index or something like that of the chips by some mind-melting process I don't really understand) to actually validate them. But we didn't get to 7nm by just waking up one day in the 70's and saying, "you know what, why are we bothering with all of this _10µm_ scale crap? We should be, like, making them way smaller; we should just jump a couple orders of magnitude and make them _smaller!"_ No, we started with making transistors that were 10µm, then moved to 6µm, then 3µm, and so on and so forth over the last few _decades._ Tirelessly iterating to make these things smaller and smaller, and rearranging them so we could fit more of them in an area, and inventing new processes to layer them more efficiently, and etc...
The exact same thing has been happening pretty much since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Early steam engines were sloppy as hell, with a lot of inefficiency from gaps around the pistons, friction from these loose fits causing steel to rub on steel, etc... You _could_ make extremely precise, clockwork machines with tight tolerances, but this was impractically expensive for machines that needed to be reliably run in less-than-ideal conditions and be somewhat repairable in the field. This is also the real reason why guns took so long to take off after the discovery of gunpowder. We in the west understood the concept and knew _how_ to make a tube go boom pretty quickly after we found out about gunpowder. The _first_ problem was figuring out a simple and reliable firing mechanism, but the second, _bigger_ problem was then figuring out how to make _fifty thousand of them._ We _had_ wheel-lock muskets before flint-locks, but they basically required a watch-maker's expertise to craft a one-of-a-kind gun, it was horribly expensive, they were finicky in the best of conditions and just generally not suited for the mass production capabilities of the time. And then to get a simple flint-lock gun required that a standard pattern be designed so that hundreds of different craftsmen gunsmiths could build _the same gun_ over and over again in many different workshops. The problem wasn't the _concept,_ it was figuring out a relatively cheap design and then how to make the same thing over and over and over with some degree of precision.
Want a more common and recent example? Go actually stand next to a classic muscle car from the 60's or 70's while it's running. Notice how it _reeks_ of gasoline? While part of this is from gas not being leaded anymore and many of these cars not having emissions control and catalytic converters, a lot of it is also just because the tolerances were so much looser that gasoline vapor _just fucking leaks out of the engine._ The same is somewhat true of the sound. That's the sound of inefficiency (and pollution). It's a cool-ass sound, but there's a reason cars don't sound like that anymore (except diesels, but that's a different thing lol). A lot of the reason these older cars run the way they do is because they're less efficient and turn a lot more of that energy into noise and vibration. Improvements in manufacturing gradually lead to much tighter tolerances which lead to more efficient and reliable engines, until we get to today where a fairly average commuter, 4-banger hatchback has more horsepower, is lighter, more efficient, safer, less-polluting, longer-lasting, and more reliable than some _supercars_ from 50 years ago. And many newer gasoline cars _are almost silent while doing all that._
So that's how it happened. From _a lot of work_ over _hundreds of years_ by people who were constantly toiling away just to improve precision by fractions of a fraction of an inch to make _something_ a tiny bit better, cheaper, or easier to make.
@@Kevin-jb2pv wow! That was quite the long winded reply- & yet I enjoyed reading it…..?!🤷♂️
sometimes the screws are hand lapped for greater accuracy. The real trick is having the equipment to measure them.
Wonderful! It is beyond reason anyone would dislike one of your videos - so interesting, with so much effort put into them.
"Machine Thinking, your dinner's getting cold! What are you doing up there?"
"Mum, you have got to see these screws!"
Thanks for the great info and specially for no rude commercials in the middle.
Wow this was an awesome presentation, than,s for making it! I just took measurements for granted until this. I will never look at measurements the same again !
Great video. The fact that one invention was so influential, reminds of the 1000s upon 1000s of ingenious discoveries and inventions that made the cellphone possible. What an unreal marvel it is.
These precision, screws and history videos always amaze me 🤯 Thanks for the effort and great content.
Just discovered this channel, and I know I'm going to be waiting for the next one every day after I watch through the whole of your channel!
I've always been fascinated by the most minimal things and most commonplace miracles we have, and still missed how fucking important screws are.
I love the way you explain things in a way that I can pretend to understand. Too bad I can't keep the details in my head long enough to explain to someone else why I know that someone works the way it does.
Don't feel bad about "forgetting" the details. Every time we learn something new, a bit gets stored where we can access it easily, the rest goes deeper down.
It can feel like you forgot and the time is wasted. Then a year later you learn something new and you can link it to that previous knowledge in the back of your head. Those beautifull "ahah" moments. From that point on, you truly acquired the knowledge and can explain it to others.
Its the background to the famous quote about truly understanding something when you can explain it to your grandmother.
The fact that you cannot explain it yet means that you are on the frontier of your knowledge, busy day learning new stuff, and I respect that immensely.
Measurement is at the heart of all processes and the accuracy of that measurement is the driver of repeatability. I was discussing this with a friend who has a very old and rare Winchester rifle and I explained to him that improvements in manufacturing usually came from necessity being the mother of invention. People like Winchester invented and made the machines that allowed him to make a better and more accurate rifle in less time and less money and screw-based machines were at the heart of it. But One thing I never lose sight of is that way back in the beginning someone had to make the parts of the first machines by hand with crude tools like files and oil stones and such so that machines could replace what they did by hand but do it much faster and in many cases more accurately. Then those machines made the machines that drove further improvements in capability, accuracy, and cost. That process continues to this very day.
I love these videos, it’s fascinating to me as a machinist where the industry came from and there’s not enough informative videos out there like these, I really enjoy yours and always look forward to your next ones, thank you for the great videos
MT, interesting video, I'm a home hobby machinist, I'd known most of what you've presented, but it's useful to have the information presented in an organized and coherent manner. Thanks for your efforts.
Brilliant video, I enjoyed it immensely! Though, the Swede in me I missed the Swedish connection with precision measurement of CE Johansson. If you want to do a followup video looking at him, his gauge blocks, collaboration with Henry Ford and the high precision CEJ invention the mikrokator, hit me up and we can collab! 😊
The first video I ever made, Origins of Precision, has a bunch on CEJ (including footage of him!) and Ford starting around 10:50.
@@machinethinking so what I'm hearing is that you're due for another one? 😉
@@SwitchAndLever LOL. Or, maybe you're not hearing at all... ^_<
You should perhaps review MT's prior video - he covers Johansen quite well.
@@misterdudemanguy9771 I've watched it, long ago. It was a joke, so chill 🙂
@@machinethinking The music is annoying bro.
I work for a screw making company. I see a lot of screws daily. This however I am always happy to see.
Thank you for the link! Because of videos like your we started a shop with kids and are tinkering with Chinese machines. Thank you for the history and inspiration!
that's awesome, it always makes me happy to hear about kids getting interested in machining and engineering. I hope you guys have allot of fun and make some cool projects.
When people ask me what I do, kI often tell them that I make the things, that make the things. Specifically I'm a mold maker but I also do general manual machining. Since I work in tenths, all of my instruments have that resolution and while not cheap, it still often boggles my mind that I can measure something like an eyelash and know my measurement is not only accurate but done mechanically (I leave them fancy digital micrometers to the kids). Great video, thanks for the research and now I have to figure out how to get to England so I can drag people into the museum and make them listen to how cool this stuff is.
You doing ok? Been quiet
@@astebbin yep already watched that, and thanks
he went screwy 😢
Sounds like my wife
Honestly, your channel is severeley underrated
Holy shit, he posted. Ayyy maaaa, MT posted
My favourite channel about screws.
This is fascinating, beautiful stuff, and I appreciate the work you put into them to make them lucid and entertaining.
I've seen mechanical Swiss screw machines in action, in practical use, at a manufacturing company in Santa Clara, CA. It had cams and followers and arms, and it made screws faster than a modern CNC screw machine. It didn't look that fast, but the tooling was up close, whereas a CNC screw machine has a longer distance to travel before it can change tools. And there's the tool change time itself. I tried to find video of such a machine online, but couldn't find any. It's a marvel to watch, and you get a sense of the mechanical genius of it's inventor, though realizing that what I was watching was a derivative of the original.
The machinist UA-cam circle is so cool... keep on keeping on!
I was way over excited to see another video uploaded! Thank you!
From personal experience, Whitworth threads were still being used on some products in the UK in the 1980's. Most likely to use up old stock! I owned a 1983 Landrover Series 3, Stage-1 V8, that had both Whitworth and Imperial Standard threads. Had to buy a set of Whitworth spanners from eBay just to work on the thing!
You absolutely learned me more about screws! I actually have a screw lathe after my father, but never used it for that. But now i will!
I love the extremely rough, last-minute clearance cut-outs at the ends of the rear triangular way on Maudslay's screw cutting lathe. THAT'S prototype engineering and manufacturing - at it's most basic level! Also love your videos.
I noticed that too haha I was like, yep, that’s definitely a prototype
I bought an old 9 inch south bend lathe and it is the most useful tool a man can imagine! Making screws is so oddly satisfying!
Another amazing video. As soon as I wondered about temperature impacting the results, sure enough, you brought it up. Curious if we might see a video studying lathes that use air bearings in temp controlled environments? Thanks again.
Noob here, how are air bearings used in lathes?
@@Chainsaw-ASMR ua-cam.com/video/sFrVdoOhu1Q/v-deo.html
@@jamesboulton2722 Dan Gelbart...another UA-cam GOAT!
Thanks
Wow! It may be a long time between drinks but your videos are well worth the wait! Cheers!
Loved this, always fascinating content.
Hour long real engineering video and a machine thinking video on the same day. Life is good.
This is one of those channels that doesn’t release content often, but when it does, it’s quality content 😄
The only channel I've seen every video for. Keep up the interesting work
During my apprenticeship, I had this moment where I suddenly realised how much more precise we can measure, that was when I first got to play around with a 0.001mm micrometre and I measured my own hair... realising it's way thicker than I ever thought... after that, I went into the insane world of sub-micron machining with lapping and it again blew my mind how precise we can machine things if you just take the time and have to will to do it... hitting 0.1mm tolerances now feels like sloppy work :D
A couple of years ago I saw some MT videos and got great value out of them. Because I didn't bookmark them or subscribe, eventually YT stopped recommending them. Recently I have been thinking a lot about the videos I was watching years ago, which YT is no longer recommending to me. I knew there were a series of videos about screws... Anyway, glad to be back on the MT track.
Me: babe come over
Her: no
Me: a new machine thinking just dropped
Her:🏃♀️💨💨💨
Surely she could use her words to tell you what she thinks. Might I suggest some beano in the household? /s
Sam . Maybe she isn't interested in screwing .
@@karlhrdylicka I think she'd rather watch.
Glad you put out another video. I was worried.
The thumbscrew on the thimble has a smaller knurled part, that is the spring loaded ratchet. It should be used when taking a measurement. Using the thimble to achieve measurement and not the ratchet would give inconsistent readings.
Could you explain this further? Sorry, I'm not a native english speaker but I used to use micrometers daily in my former job so I am very curious in what you mean :)
having used ratcheted and still mics, ive always gotten more accurate results by using the locked part and using "feel". the ratchets put too much pressure and read small imo
@@thepsychobilly88 When you measure a part with a micrometer, you squeeze the part between the jaws of the micrometer. Using the spring-loaded/ratchet mechanism to turn the micrometer always applies the same torque to the micrometer, and will cause the same amount of compression on the part being measured; if you turn the micrometer directly by the dial, you may end up applying more torque, or less torque, and the measurements will be inconsistent.
@@Kineth1 Aah, yes! I understand what you mean now 👍👍 I was aware of the spring loaded mechanism but I wasn't sure if you were talking about that or something else that I might have missed. Sorry for the confusion! Your explanation is very good and very helpful thou so I hope more people see it, it's well written and easy to understand, Kudos! :)
This is the most polished content on all of UA-cam and I can’t believe it has so few views.
when life gives you lemons, watch this series about screws
Very nice video. Thank you.
Side note: Personal “around the house” homeowner maintenance experience in s 60yo residence has given me tremendous appreciation for whatever technology made the manufacture of Phillips head screws feasible and contributed to the prevalent use of Phillips head screws in lieu of flat head screws in more recent times. Ha.
Odd! I absolutely hate phillips head because of its tendency to cam out, I try to use hex screws everywhere I can, usually they're not much more expensive
@@yyunko7764 The History Guy has covered screws and screwdrivers (ua-cam.com/video/R-mDqKtivuI/v-deo.html), worth your time. Camming out in Phillips screws is intentional to prevent overdriving.
Great video as usual! How amazing to have the Palmer and B&S in your hand.
Another video on how those hyper precise screws are actually made (beyond the intuitive knowledge that your can gear down masters with clever backlash control) would be great to see.
Definitely do one on Whitworth. I grew up fixing Land Rovers made in the 60’s and it’s all AF or Whit.
Who knew such a simple device could be so important. This is great stuff!!
I like how you say you won’t go into how to read a micrometer, while showing footage that explains it completely….
@David Lewis Stop being right all the time. its annoying :P
@David Lewis The graduation of the rough scale? While it's not explained perfectly it's pretty obvious for people who can read a ruler.
Far from a complete explanation. But enough to get point across. You would be surprised at how much u don't know about using a mic and associated devices ( snap gauges, gauge blocks, just to start) there are volumes of books on the subject of prescion measure. In fact science still isn't sure what forces allow you to wring gauge blocks together. Allegedly. Lol
The pure joy I felt seeing a new video in my notifications.
The screw cutting lathe can replicate the precision of the lead screw, but how do you improve on it?
Read Moore's book , Holes, Contours and Surfaces. You can purchase it and also find it PDF on line. The Moore jig grinder was feature here in the video.
@@glennschemitsch8341 besides the fact that I don't see how you could manufacture a lead screw using a grinder, the problem is the same: with this machines you can't produce a precision higher than the precision of their lead screw, since every defect in the lead screws is transfered 1:1 to your piece...
@@Beregorn88 The Moore lead screw is hand lapped to final tolerances.
@patrick evans I have read about it,but I do not know exactly how they measure it. Sorry.
I discovered Whitworth threads while trying to machine the interior thread for an espresso machine pressure gauge -- It turns out the thread was a BSPP ("British Standard Pipe Parallel", 55-deg Whitworth) thread which is apparenly most common for these types of gauges. As a complete newbie, trying to grind my own very small, 55-deg single point, inside tooling...I failed. I bought a tap but will never forget the difference between Whitworth 55-deg and standard 60-deg threads. Awesome video. Thanks for filling in the knowledge background.
I greatly appreciate the time and effort you've put into making such amazing content, thank you!
10:31 I love the grooves that have been worn into the machine by the wheel on the left
The end product is one thing, the brain power to make them is another, these people are Goliath's of world, Titans using only primitive tools. What could these people produce if they were alive today?
i like those old miniature machines in the background also, i enjoy every bit of history like this
It has been decades ago since I last time used a mechanical micrometer. I know that I managed to get very good precision using my vernier caliper, although I needed to to do more readings. Of course using a proper micrometer gave more consistent results, but for all the practical purposes, I was able to measure to one thousandth of a millimeter and was wrong only withing plus or minus 2 thousands when compared to multiple micrometer readings. I never needed that much precision tough. EDIT: Now I am not sure if I was not bragging too much, because what I wrote calls for some proof and I do not have a micrometer at hand to test my claims. I apologize if anyone felt mislead or offended.
I vaguely remember learning mathematical methods to getting accurate results from ordinary instruments by taking 10 measurements, moving the measuring instrument (whether a caliper or a micrometer) back and forth between each measurement. I ultimately went into a different career, but I think that's how high end digital calipers and micrometers work these days, with a cable connecting to a ordinary laptop computer.
I am super happy that you keep making your videos. They are fascinating! Thank you!
I have a question regarding Maudslay and I'd be thankful if someone would try to answer my it. :D
How exactly does one get the first lead screw, which you can put into the screw cutting lathe ?
Do you have to make it by hand ? And wouldn't that make it imprecise and thus all other screws manufactured with this lead screw too ?
Where would you start here ?
(If I wrote this question to complicated, then I'm very sorry, it basically boils down to: Where does the first precision screw come from, without a screw cutting lathe to manufacture it with)
I don't know how the first lead screws were made, but I think I can present a good guess.
One thing that can be made to high precision from scratch is a set of extremely flat stone surfaces. You need to start with more than two. If you have just two stone slabs, and you grind them against each other, you may end up with one concave and the other convex. If you have a set of at least three, and you keep swapping them out then over the course of a lot of grinding you end up with stone slabs that are flat to very high precision. The slabs have made each other perfectly flat.
The perfectly flat stone surfaces allow you to manufacture sets of gage blocks, because the flat surface enable making blocks with surfaces that are *parallel* to high precision. Being able to verify surfaces being parallel moves the whole process forward.
Let's say you have a single 1 inch gage block that you will be using as your reference. You make half inch gage blocks as follows: you make two gage blocks that satisfy the following two demands:
- They are exactly the same size *as each other*.
- Stacked together they stack up to exactly the height of the reference 1 inch.
The micrometer that you use to compare the gage blocks only needs to *repeat* at very high reliability. Even if the micrometer cannot *measure* accurately yet, being able to verify that two gage blocks are exactly the *same* size is sufficient to move the whole process forward
The set of gage blocks will allow you to calibrate instruments/machines you manufactured.
Thread can also be cut with a mill. It takes a specialized milling machine, (or auxillary tool), that allows you to maintain a precise ratio of axial rotation of the workpiece and advancing the workpiece. Thread has an integer number of windings per unit of length. So a special thread milling machine setup can be built with worm gears, such that the axial rotation and advancing is mechanically coupled in the desired ratio.
If that worm gear setup has some slop the resulting lead screw will have local imperfections, but slop or no slop, the worm gear *mechanical coupling* of axial rotation and advancing ensures that the thread pitch will be overall consistent. So even if the worm gear setup has slop the process as a whole can still be moved forward.
I've done a lot of research on this and there are several methods. I wanted to talk about it i this one but I chose to keep it focused but I DID briefly show Maudslay's Screw Originating Machine that uses the inclined knife method to make uniform threads soft material. Look it up!
@@machinethinking
Will do. :D
And thank you very much, for taking the time to answer ! This question has been bugging me for quite some time.
thank you...! a youtube content creator who is honest about the annoyance of mid-roll ads...! i am not a machinist but i come from a mechanical background and enjoy videos like yours and other machinist like blondihacks... i think a lot of youtube content makers are under the false impression that mid-roll ads increase their bottom line... if anything, it increases the bottom line of youtube (google)...!
i did not know the screw had such a fascinating history...! thank you again for a great video on the history of precision screws... 👍😎
11:17 As a reference, a row of just 89 atoms of iron can fit in 1 millionth of an inch
The Whitworth thread standards are absolutely still relevant today. The US military used Whitworth threads until the early 80s. I just had an F14 component I modeled up for a machine shop full of Whitworths threads. They will be making those parts for the next 5 years.
I left Squid Game immediately to watch your new video. Quality content, glad you make them!
Your videos exactly describe my fascination about the intersection of history and machining, awesome vid!
i wish this video was longer, i could watch this all day
Yo, you a hero for making the 3D printable plans for that mic.
By what you showed it should be fairly easy to make a hand heald micrometer able to measure 1/10 to 1/100 of a mm at home just starting with a well made finely threaded rod and nuts. I think I will try one day. Very interesting and informative video, well done.
Moore tool was right near my Dad's boat repair shop and some of the workers there were customers, I remember my Dad telling me , they made the machines that made the machines ! , some of the machinists there made us some special tools for repairing outdrives maybe 40 years ago, like Jewelry ! Bridgeport used to make everything , now ,pretty much gone.sad
Great video and storytelling! I recently read an article about some of these early precision developments in "Home Shop Machinist" magazine, and I wanted to see more! This video is it! Thanks.
At 17:40, the edge / rim of the dial plate sure looks like it has worm-gear-like grooves. I wonder if Watt had the main screw engage the rim of that disc in an earlier version, but then reused it as the dial face? But looking closer, I think I see the outer edge of a similar disc parallel to this disc, is actually what moves the sliding block, which is not how it appears to work in the earlier animation. Guess I need to watch your other video 🙂
Your site is unlike any other on youtube.I seem to like every one.
I can't imagine watching 20min documentary about screws, but Machine Thinking is on another level.
You are the first person to shed light on the question that plagued me throughout my life, vis a vi,
How did modern man arrive at this ability?
One can easily be flooded with political history,
Science history,
Music history,
Etc,etc,etc,
Never have I found industrial history, and had long resigned of the possibility that it might exist, concluding that all record of such had been relegated to the scrap heap of human history.
This video was somehow in my suggestions and is a breath of restored hope.
Thank you so much.
I subscribed, by the way
Early watch making would be an interesting series. Well done man!
Glad to see you back!
I have immensely enjoyed your series on the origins of precision.
Yet another superb episode. Please keep making them.