Custom Car Part Fabrication Tools - Part 2

The main machines that are used in a machine shop are called milling machines and lathes, though many other machines support the operations of a shop. In the olden days a person manually operated these machines via hand cranks and levers.


If you have an old or rare car, many of the parts were probably manufactured on machines much like these, but set up for high production rates. Almost all machine shops have a few manual machines to perform small or simple operations. Difficult-to-manufacture parts can be produced with a manual machine, but it can become extremely complicated and time consuming.

Computer Age
Thus enters new technology in the form of automatic computer controlled milling machines and lathes. Interestingly, these machines came into use in the early 1950s. Most large automotive manufacturers began using them as soon as possible, because the high production rates that these machines could achieve were obvious. However, only the past couple of decades have seen a wide use in smaller machine shops.


Imagine that you have a rare car with an engine part that you just can't buy anywhere. This old part can be measured with a coordinate measuring machine, or even a machine that scans a digital image and records the dimensions. These dimensions can be loaded into a computer aided manufacturing program, which will produce the code that the actual automatic milling machine or lathe will use to cut the part.


Often the person manufacturing the part will watch a computer image of the part being machined before any metal is ever cut. Surprisingly, this whole process is often faster than making a single part on a manual machine.