Everyday miracles: look around. We take machining so much for granted that it's hard to imagine what we--and the world--would be like without it.

Taking things for granted is a good thing-otherwise we'd get so wrapped up in appreciating the world around us that we'd end up so enraptured by the mundane that we'd appear comatose. But, sometimes we get that kickin-the-head revalation that opens our eyes to the taken-for-granted miracles around us, that we have to stop to appreciate the astounding things we encounter without a second thought.

Being the head text basher of Modern Applications News, I sometimes fall down the rabbit hole of contemplating the machining efforts of stuff I encounter every day.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

My job involves some travel. Believe me, what once sounded glamorous-travel to big cities to see new things-soon turns into spending hours sitting in airports or shoe-horned into steerage-class airline seats getting bumped by beverage carts designed with micrometer clearances between seats.

In some of those long hours waiting for my flights, I take a fresh look at my surroundings to see what around me has come from a machine shop. Well, pretty much everything. Take the seats in the terminal waiting areas. We've all seen them a hundred-or in some cases, a thousand-times. But, consider the leg brackets that hold those bench-style seats upright and together. They probably started as aluminum castings. Somewhere in their manufacturing process, they had to be ground to their final finish. Holes for bolts and parts had to be drilled and tapped. Flat surfaces had to be milled. There's a whole level of machining going on that we take for granted that couldn't have been done as reasonably just 150 years ago. Not to say something like that couldn't have been made back then, but inexpensively enough to populate in waiting areas by the millions? Nah.

Don't even get me started on what machining goes into modern automobiles.

It's Not Just ipods

I carry another piece of remarkable machining around with me. No, not a cell phone or a notebook PC, something a lot more intimate. An implanted titanium socket and post for a prosthetic tooth.

I was unfortunate enough to vertically crack one of my lower molars. It couldn't be fixed; what Microsoft might call an "Unrecoverable Error" if it were writing error codes for the PeteNofel Mark I. The dentist removed it, but it left an annoying space. My oral surgeon suggested an implant to replace it, rather than something so primitive as a bridge. I am also vain enough to want something that looks like a real tooth, too.

I'll avoid all of the gooey details.

Suffice to say that when the time came, a small titanium socket, which looked like a machine screw, was bolted down into my jawbone. While light, strong, and heat-resistant-attributes appreciated in high-performance aircraft-titanium also has an affinity for bone; it will bond with the metal much more tightly than other metals.

The interior of the post was tapped for a future post that would support a ceramic crown. In the meantime, while the socket set in my jaw, a smaller bolt was placed in the post to keep the socket clean.

A few weeks later, back at my regular dentist after the socket had set in my jaw, the small bolt was removed, and a post screwed in using a torque wrench the size of nail clippers. A temporary plastic cap was installed while castings and measurements went to a lab to build my new tooth.

Oral Hardware

All the while I was in the dentist's chair during this penultimate process, I was thinking of where and who makes the hardware going into my mouth. This wasn't like George Washington's ivory teeth, hand-carved by some artisan. These machine parts were probably cut, milled, drilled, and tapped by a Swiss-style machine in a shop operating at extreme tolerances. Also, I had a tooth replacement nearly as good as the one grown naturally. Maybe even better, since if I cracked this one, I could get a replacement made.

Without machining and job shops, we'd still be sitting toothlessly-at least in my case-in one-of-kind hovels with no interchangeable parts. Boy, am I glad I live in 21 st Century America.

Pete Nofel

Modern Applications News

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