Cutting tool (machining) in the context of "Grinding (abrasive cutting)"

Drilling is a cutting process where a drill bit is spun to cut a hole of circular cross-section in solid materials. The drill bit is usually a rotary cutting tool, often multi-point. The bit is pressed against the work-piece and rotated at rates from hundreds to thousands of revolutions per minute. This forces the cutting edge against the work-piece, cutting off chips (swarf) from the hole as it is drilled.

In rock drilling, the hole is usually not made through a circular cutting motion, though the bit is usually rotated. Instead, the hole is usually made by hammering a drill bit into the hole with quickly repeated short movements. The hammering action can be performed from outside the hole (top-hammer drill) or within the hole (down-the-hole drill, DTH). Drills used for horizontal drilling are called drifter drills.

Turning is a machining process in which a cutting tool is held nearly stationary to cut a rotating workpiece. The cutting tool can be slowly moved back-and-forth, and in-and-out to cut cylindrical shapes, and flat surfaces on the workpiece. Turning is usually done with a lathe.

Usually the term "turning" is used for cutting external surfaces, and "boring" for internal surfaces, or holes. Thus the phrase "turning and boring" categorizes the larger family of processes known as lathing. Additionally, "facing" is cutting the ends of the workpiece, to create flat faces.

Machinability is the ease with which a metal can be cut (machined) permitting the removal of the material with a satisfactory finish at low cost. Materials with good machinability (free-machining materials) require little power to cut, can be cut quickly, easily obtain a good finish, and do not cause significant wear on the tooling. Factors that typically improve a material's performance often degrade its machinability, presenting a significant engineering challenge.

Machinability can be difficult to predict due to the large number of variables involved in the machining process. Two sets of factors are the condition and physical properties of the work materials. The condition of the work material includes at least eight factors: microstructure, grain size, heat treatment, chemical composition, fabrication, hardness, yield strength, and tensile strength. Physical properties are those of the individual material groups, such as the modulus of elasticity, thermal conductivity, thermal expansion, and work hardening. Other important factors are operating conditions, cutting tool material and geometry, and the parameters of the specific machining process being performed.

Milling cutters are cutting tools typically used in milling machines or machining centres to perform milling operations (and occasionally in other machine tools). They remove material by their movement within the machine (e.g., a ball nose mill) or directly from the cutter's shape (e.g., a form tool such as a hobbing cutter).

Tool and die makers are highly skilled crafters working in the manufacturing industries.Tool and die makers work primarily in toolroom environments—sometimes literally in one room but more often in an environment with flexible, semipermeable boundaries from production work. They are skilled artisans (craftspeople) who typically learn their trade through a combination of academic coursework and with substantial period of on-the-job training that is functionally an apprenticeship. They make jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, machine tools, cutting tools, gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing processes.

A machine shop or engineering workshop is a room, building, or company where machining, a form of subtractive manufacturing, is done. In a machine shop, machinists use machine tools and cutting tools to make parts, usually of metal or plastic (but sometimes of other materials such as glass or wood). A machine shop can be a small business (such as a job shop) or a portion of a factory, whether a toolroom or a production area for manufacturing. The building construction and the layout of the place and equipment vary, and are specific to the shop; for instance, the flooring in one shop may be concrete, or even compacted dirt, and another shop may have asphalt floors. A shop may be air-conditioned or not; but in other shops it may be necessary to maintain a controlled climate. Each shop has its own tools and machinery which differ from other shops in quantity, capability and focus of expertise.

The parts produced can be the end product of the factory, to be sold to customers in the machine industry, the car industry, the aircraft industry, or others. It may encompass the frequent machining of customized components. In other cases, companies in those fields have their own machine shops.

G-code (abbreviation for geometric code; also called RS-274, standardized today in ISO 6983-1) is the most widely used computer numerical control (CNC) and 3D printing programming language. It is used mainly in computer-aided manufacturing to control automated machine tools, as well as for 3D-printer slicer applications. G-code has many variants.

G-code instructions are provided to a machine controller (industrial computer) that tells the motors where to move, how fast to move, and what path to follow. The two most common situations are that, within a machine tool such as a lathe or mill, a cutting tool is moved according to these instructions through a toolpath cutting away material to leave only the finished workpiece and/or an unfinished workpiece is precisely positioned in any of up to nine axes around the three dimensions relative to a toolpath and, either or both can move relative to each other. The same concept also extends to noncutting tools such as forming or burnishing tools, photoplotting, additive methods such as 3D printing, and measuring instruments.