Manual machining has been around since two-man lathes in 1300 BCE. While the history of milling machines is a little foggy, some historians credit the first motorized milling machine to Eli Whitney, while others claim other inventors like Captain John H. Hall of the Harpers Ferry Armory, Simeon North, Roswell Lee, Robert Johnson, and Thomas Blanchard.

The first CNC milling machine was developed in 1957, and the concept of modern CNC really hasn’t changed since. Yet, the worlds surrounding CNC – fabrication, engineering, product development, manufacturing, Et al. – have changed dramatically.

Scott Phillips grew up around a machine shop. His dad tried to get him involved in fabrication, but to no avail. It wasn’t until years later that Phillips fell into machining as a career, and then he really took to the world of manufacturing.

In case you missed it, the old TV show that pitted highly-engineered machines against one another in a ring of metal-mangling death has returned – BattleBots. Robotics are one of the first elements of science and technology that comes to mind when discussing STEM and its benefits – and what better way to discuss robotics than to have the machines fight to destruction?

Don Breneman purchased a PCNC 1100 as an affordable secondary operation CNC mill to solve a costly bottleneck in his machine shop.  A standing order for oil and gas components was keeping his Haas VF2 busy around the clock, but each part required a serial number. The engraving operation for parts of varying sizes accounted for more than half of the cycle time on the single machine.  “Using an 8000 lb. machine for engraving is like killing a fly with a hammer,” he explains.  By offloading the engraving operation, Breneman felt he could free up time on the VF2 for higher-value jobs.

  We've seen lots of Tormach owners and users launch their ideas through Kickstarter.  In that vein, here's a neat project with a Tormach connection from just a few miles down the road from our offices -  the Radiant Lionhead 3D Printer: