Although wood-working machines have been in use since Biblical times, it was not until the late 17th Century that clockmakers, builders of scientific instruments, and furniture and gun makers began the changeover to machines capable of manufacturing steel. They had a need for a variety of gear cutting, grinding and precise screw-cutting machines to fabricate their products [7].

The first practical metalworking lathe was invented in 1800 by Henry Maudslay. It was simply a machine tool that held the piece of material being worked (workpiece) in a clamp (spindle), and rotated it so that a cutting tool could machine the surface to the desired contour. The cutting tool was manipulated by the operator through the use of cranks and handwheels.

 Not much later, in 1818, American Eli Whitney built a pioneering horizontal milling machine; and in 1861, the American firm of Brown & Sharpe constructed the first truly universal milling machine, specifically for machining the grooves in twist drills (see Fig. 3.1).

Between the 1860s and the 1960s, there was an extraordinary quantum leap in humanity’s capacity to transform raw metal into highly complex components. Together with contemporary developments in chemistry and electrical technology, this revolution in metalworking formed the industrial backbone of the modern world [10].

Brown's machine had set the stage for the developments of the twentieth century that were to follow; greater strength and rigidity, faster cutting speeds, higher precision, the inclusion of the electric motor and fully automatic operation [11]. These automatic aids to proficiency, always adhering to the double principle of accuracy and productivity, have increased through the years.

Based on these inventions, watchmaker and jewellers built milling machines capable of producing reliable and consistently small precision parts for serial production. New design and forms of components unimaginable until then at smaller sizes within tighter tolerances became possible for manufacturing. These initial steps established the origins of the forthcoming micromilling technology.

In 1983, Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo Science University illustrated the evolution that machine accuracy capabilities had underwent since the early 20th century, and the predicted the trend of these technologies for the following 30 years (see Fig. 3.2). Taniguchi would first define the concept of Nanotechnology to refer to the production technology to get the extra-high accuracy and ultra-fine dimensions [12].

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