Engineering

Ball and Acme Leadscrews

The screw as a machine axis: Acme in service and the recirculating ball screw side by side, the same five-kilonewton job priced on both bills — drive torque, holding duty, heat …

Ball, Roller and Needle Bearings

Rolling replaces sliding: the catalogue family from deep-groove to taper and needle, the L10 life equation worked in hours with its brutal cube law, the statistics of rolling fa…

Bevel Gears

Bevel gears for intersecting shafts: pitch cones and cone angles, straight versus spiral bevel, cone distance, the back-cone or Tredgold approximation and equivalent teeth, mitr…

British Fasteners

The British thread systems and their legacy: the Whitworth 55-degree form with its rounded crests, BSW and BSF, the metric-based British Association series, and British Standard…

Broaches and Broaching

Broaching a finished form in a single pass: the broach as a bar of progressively taller teeth, the rise per tooth that sets how much each removes, tooth pitch and cutting force,…

Buttress Threads

The one-way thread: the asymmetric 7°/45° form, the flank-angle arithmetic showing buttress cuts nut-bursting force 4.7 times below the 60° vee while matching square-thread effi…

Calculating Thread Dimensions

One dimension generates the whole thread: where the constants 0.6495, 1.0825, 1.2269 and 0.9382 come from in the 60° triangle, the working diameters of an M10×1.5 computed in fu…

Cams

Cams and followers: the displacement diagram, the four standard motion laws (uniform velocity, simple harmonic, parabolic and cycloidal) compared by peak acceleration and smooth…

Cap and Set Screws

Two fasteners with opposite jobs: the socket head cap screw that clamps at class 12.9 strength through a hex socket, and the headless set screw that locks a hub to a shaft by pr…

Cemented Carbides

Cemented carbide cutting-tool material: tungsten carbide grains in a cobalt binder, how cobalt content trades hardness against toughness, the ISO application groups, coatings, a…

CNC Numerical Control Programming

Programming computer numerical control machines: the coordinate systems and axes, G-codes and M-codes, setting spindle speed and feed from cutting data, linear and circular inte…

Couplings, Clutches and Brakes

One friction physics, three jobs: couplings that join shafts for good, clutches that join them at will, and brakes that turn motion into heat — with the clutch torque line worke…

Cutting Speeds and Feeds

Choosing the three cutting parameters — speed, feed and depth — and what each controls: tool life through speed, surface finish through feed and nose radius, and metal removal t…

Cutting Tools

The fundamentals of metal cutting: single-point tool geometry, rake and clearance angles and the tool signature, cutting speed and how it sets spindle speed, material removal ra…

Disc Springs

Belleville disc springs: cone geometry and the h/t ratio, the nonlinear force-deflection character with computed curves, series and parallel stacking arithmetic, friction and gu…

Drafting Practices

Engineering drawing essentials: the drawing as a contract, first- and third-angle projection, line conventions, views and sections, dimensioning rules with datum-versus-chain ac…

Electric Motors

The prime mover as a mechanical component: synchronous speed and slip, the induction motor's torque–speed curve with a 3 kW point worked, starting methods and the exact one-thir…

Electrical Discharge Machining

Machining by spark erosion: how EDM removes metal with no cutting force so it cuts any conductive material however hard, the spark gap and overcut, electrode wear, the finish-ve…

Elements, Heat, Mass and Weight

The physical starting points for materials work: density and how it turns a volume into a weight, specific heat and the energy to change temperature, thermal expansion, and wher…

Engineering Mathematics13 Aug 2026 · 8 min read

Engineering Economics

Money over time for engineering decisions: simple and compound interest, nominal and effective rates, cash-flow diagrams, equivalence factors with a computed 8% table, net prese…

Estimating Speeds and Machining Power

Working out the power, torque and time a cut demands: specific cutting energy and power from metal removal rate, motor power through efficiency, cutting torque, and machining ti…

Files and Burs

Hand and rotary shaping tools: single- and double-cut files and their coarseness grades, why a file is harder than the work, filing technique, and rotary burs with their high sp…

Finishing

Treating a component's surface after machining: electroplating and Faraday's law of deposition, anodising, galvanising and sacrificial protection, organic and powder coatings, a…

Flexible Belts and Sheaves

Grip is exponential: the capstan law worked flat and vee, the groove that multiplies friction three times over, a real drive priced in kilowatts, the timing belt that trades sli…

Fluid Mechanics

Fluid fundamentals for machines: properties and viscosity, pressure and head, Pascal's principle in hydraulics, buoyancy, continuity and Bernoulli, Reynolds number and flow regi…

Forming Tools

Form tools that cut a whole profile in one plunge: flat and circular form tools, why the profile must be corrected for rake, the heavy full-width cutting force they generate, an…

Gear Trains

Gear trains from simple to planetary: overall ratio of simple and compound trains, the role of idlers, the epicyclic train equation with a fixed-ring worked example, and where e…

Engineering Mathematics13 Aug 2026 · 9 min read

Geometry

Analytical and mensuration geometry for engineering: lines and coordinates, polar conversion, the circle and conic sections, areas of plane figures, regular polygon data, circul…

Grinding and Other Abrasive Processes

The abrasive processes and their tools: the grinding-wheel marking system decoded, the abrasive types and when each is used, and the finer processes of honing, lapping and super…

Grinding Feeds and Speeds

The parameters of grinding: high wheel surface speed against slow work speed, wheel rpm from surface speed, the tiny depths of cut, the grinding ratio, and the burst-speed limit…

Hardening, Tempering and Annealing

The heat treatment of steel: the iron-carbon transformations behind it, quench hardening and the martensite it forms, tempering to restore toughness, annealing and normalising t…

Mechanical13 Aug 2026 · 6 min read

Helical Coil Screw Thread Inserts

The wire coil that puts a steel thread into soft metal: why aluminium needs far more thread engagement than steel, how a helical coil insert works, fitting it with an oversize S…

Helical Gears

Helical gears for parallel shafts: the helix angle, normal versus transverse module, why the gradual tooth engagement runs quieter and stronger, the axial thrust it produces, th…

Inch Threaded Fasteners

The unified inch thread system: reading a designation like 1/4-20 UNC, the coarse-versus-fine choice and the stress area that decides it, classes of fit, and the SAE grades and …

Iron and Steel Castings

Making shapes by pouring molten metal into a mould: sand casting and its mould, the shrinkage allowance the pattern must carry, how solidification and Chvorinov's rule govern fe…

Keys and Keyseats

The little block that carries all the torque: the parallel key sized in shear and crush for a Ø40 shaft — and why crushing governs — the taper, Woodruff and feather family, the …

Knurls and Knurling

Rolling a grip pattern into metal: straight, diagonal and diamond knurls, why knurling displaces rather than cuts, the tracking condition that keeps a pattern clean, and the dia…

Lasers

The laser as a manufacturing tool: what makes laser light special, the enormous power density at focus, cutting with an assist gas, keyhole welding and marking, and the differen…

Lubrication

The one curve of tribology: friction across the boundary, mixed and full-film regimes, viscosity as the single property that matters, the lambda ratio that names your regime, bo…

Machine Screws and Nuts

The small end of threaded fastening: machine screw head styles and drive types, the numbered gauge sizes and the formula behind them, why a standard nut is the height it is, and…

Machining Econometrics

The economics of a cut: how machining cost and tooling cost pull against cutting speed, the U-shaped cost-per-part curve, and the optimum tool life for minimum cost and for maxi…

Machining Nonferrous and Nonmetallic Materials

Cutting the materials that are not steel: aluminium and copper at high speed with sharp positive tools, built-up edge and how to beat it, and the special care plastics and compo…

Engineering Mathematics13 Aug 2026 · 6 min read

Manufacturing Data Analysis

Statistics for the shop floor: samples and populations, mean and standard deviation, distribution curves, the normal curve and z-values with a computed table, estimating the fra…

Engineering Mathematics13 Aug 2026 · 6 min read

Matrices

Matrix operations for engineering: addition and scalar multiples, matrix multiplication, transpose, determinants, minors, cofactors and the adjoint, rank and singularity, the in…

Measuring Instruments and Inspection Methods

Workshop metrology: accuracy, precision and the ten-to-one rule, callipers and micrometers with worked readings, dial indicators and cosine error, gauge-block stacks, the sine b…

Measuring Screw Threads

Reaching the diameter you cannot touch: limit gauging and Taylor's principle, the three-wire method with its geometry derived and an M10×1.5 worked over best and ordinary wires,…

Measuring Units

The SI system for engineers: the seven base units and their constant-based definitions, named derived units resolved to base units, coherence and why consistent units need no co…

Metric Screw Threads

The ISO metric system that fastens the planet: reading the designation, the coarse and fine pitch series, the 6g/6H tolerance scheme, the geometric proof that plating grows a pi…