Chapter 217 (2/2)

About two hundred years after the appearance of rod machine tools, the Ming Dynasty in China published a wonderful book called Tiangong Kaiwu, which recorded various technologies of the early Ming Dynasty and the previous dynasties, including detailed records of grinding machines.

This kind of grinder uses the principle similar to the European medieval pedal machine tool, uses the pedal method to make the metal plate rotate, and works with sand and water to process jade.

Although this kind of grinder is called grinder, its function is not only grinding, but also cutting.

This kind of grinder has many kinds of tools, one of which is called ”punching weight”. The function of this kind of punching weight is mainly to empty the interior of jade. Its function is similar to that of modern boring machine. Another kind of tool is called Zhadu, whose main function is to cut jade.

Whether it is a tree lathe or a bar lathe or a grinding machine in China, the cutting tools are fixed. But later in France, an engineer named Besson designed a lathe to turn the screw by sliding the tool through the screw rod. Finally, the tool is no longer fixed in one position.

This kind of lathe already has the appearance of a modern lathe, but unfortunately, this lathe designed by Besson has not been popularized for some reasons. It is only used in small industries such as clock processing

At the same time, Da Vinci, the Italian legend, drew the conceptual sketches of lathes, boring machines, thread processing machines and internal grinding machines at the beginning of the 16th century, in which there were crank, flywheel, top and bearing mechanisms. But like Besson lathe, Da Vinci's design just stays on paper

In general, before watt improved the steam engine, lathes all over the world were at a very primitive level. This is mainly related to the selection of props, transmission system components and power sources.

Although design concepts such as Besson and Da Vinci have emerged, the real modern lathe has never appeared.

In fact, even Watt's improved steam engine, without the barrel boring machine invented by British John Wilkinson, Watt's steam engine not only could not be popularized on a large scale, but also could be regarded as a failure.

When watt improved the steam engine at that time, an important process was that he made a 38 inch thick steel cylinder. However, this kind of cylinder forged by manual hammering could really be called ”full of holes”, and the working efficiency was extremely low.

By this time, John Wilkinson had developed the world's first boring machine powered by a water wheel. At that time, Wilkinson made this kind of boring machine to process gun barrel, so this kind of boring machine was also called ”barrel boring machine”.

Wilkinson, however, after learning that Watt's cylinder processing was unsatisfactory, took the initiative to contact Watt, and then reprocessed Watt's leaky cylinder with his own barrel boring machine, finally meeting the requirements of real cylinder.

So Wilkinson began to cooperate with watt and became the only supplier of steam engine cylinders for Watt.

In order to bore larger cylinders, Wilkinson developed a cylinder boring machine on the basis of barrel boring machine to process larger cylinders.

John Wilkinson pioneered modern machine tools.

However, it is still nine years before Wilkinson developed the world's first barrel boring machine, and Jack Williams, the alchemist under Shi Xiong, has made a great breakthrough in the research of all metal machine tools.