Machine

A machine ( borrowed from French machine, machina from Latin, from Greek μηχανή this mechané " tool, artificial device, means " ) is a device with moving parts by a drive system. Machines are used as technical tools, especially for mechanical action. In the past, the energy and / or mass flow in the foreground. The flow of information first played in fine mechanical devices, a role that is today but in almost all machines of significance ( automation). Sexy goals for the invention of machines were from the perspective of a worker gain their own strength, time savings, accuracy, finer machining ability and production of identical products. There was also a relief of the production worker of physical and mental labor by machinery and equipment. These modern working tools over mainly take routine and even dangerous work.

Each machine contains custom-made items, such as at least frame and housing. A significant proportion take part a with a standard function, this machine elements are separately produced as a mass product. Fixed machine elements are, for example, screws and seals, moving elements as gears and levers.

Definitions

Conceptual history

Machines are always products of man. Due to the ancient meaning ( cf. "Deus ex machina " ), the machine was up to modern times mainly as a means to an illusion - understood and only secondarily as an aid - the generation of unnatural, so impossible effects.

In the Renaissance, a more accurate concept developed mechanisms: mechanisms are complexes of components in which inevitably causes the movement of an element the movement of other elements. They have moving components in the rule and are compared to the apparatus ( the, tool ') much more complex.

During this time, a mechanism was primarily a plant a form of gears, which transmit forces. Among the most intricate mechanisms included the Grande Complication (Grand Complication ) in mechanical automatic movements. In this sense, the Antikythera mechanism is to understand an ancient artifact that replicated the celestial mechanics.

During this time Art ( artes mechanicae ) designated nor the Engineering and Mining in the 19th century art were called in mining of hydropower and horseback driven machines.

Mechanical Basics: simple machine and machine

The development of classical mechanics as a scientific discipline since the Enlightenment tends to look for the basic elements of mechanical systems, in the sense of, atoms ', the components, which can not be split further - being considered which was already by the ancient Greek engineers ( Aristotle ): So the simple machines can be defined, namely cable and rod, reel, lever and inclined plane ( in ancient times even the screw that can be modeled as a rod but and inclined plane ).

More or less complex mechanisms are virtually all engineering and technical disciplines in before. The spectrum of possible machines ranges from a simple equipment with associated, moving parts ( mechanisms ) up to several kilometers extending complex structures ( systems).

In the industrial application machines usually have a drive ( eg a motor) which continuously delivers more or less energy. With this energy the machines, which is why they are called working machines work. Of the engine and other equipment, to convert the various forms of energy, usually in rotational kinetic energy, referred to as combustion engines.

Because the machine if it has a continuous drive operations into a series of repeatable steps shares ( " formalized " ), its meaning overlaps with that of the machine. You can ( unpredictable ) replace actions of humans or animals through predictable activities ( an algorithm ). The αὐτόματος car matos, " the moves of its own volition ", are original works constructed on wheels, also illusionistic toys - but he meets the mechanistic role models of education that seeks to explain the nature as inevitable, determinable sequence.

Development of the definition in the industrialization

• 20th century: Standardization Efforts are being made to distinguish between apparatus, equipment, tools, instruments and equipment: Apparatus the same substance or matter that converts technical structure, the same device that converts signal - technical structures. Tools, devices that do not work independently. Instruments are devices that do not contribute to the implementation of work, but the display. Are complex systems of machinery, apparatus, appliances, tools and instruments.

• Late 20th century: In Europe, the machine is defined in the Machinery Directive. As a result of computerization and automation in the 20th century, the term of the machine has extended to computer programs that allow the machine to be simulated. In the engineering but is usually distinguished between mechanical machine and electronic machines.

The European Machinery Directive definition Help

With the help of the Machinery Directive same level of protection to prevent accidents to machinery when marketing within the European Economic Area (EEA ) and Switzerland, and Turkey is regulated. It also specifies what must be regarded as a machine:

After 2006/42/EC Article 2, paragraph a ( or transposition into national law by 9 ProdSV § 2, paragraph 2) "machinery "

• One equipped with a drive system other than directly applied human or animal effort, or intended, consisting of linked parts or components, at least one and one of which moves, and which are joined together for a specific application;
• An assembly referred to in the first indent, missing only the parts that connect it on site or to sources of energy and motion;
• A ready assembly referred to in the first and second indents, on a means of transport, or installed in a building or structure is functional only after affixing;
• An assembly of machinery within the meaning of the first, second and third indents or partly completed machinery referred the letter g, which are that they work together, are arranged and controlled so that they function as an integral whole;
• An assembly of linked parts or components, at least one or moves, and which are joined together for lifting loads and whose only power source is directly applied human effort.

A machine is functional regardless of the environment as a separate entity, in essence, while its individual components are not usually independent of the machine sense when used.

Does not, however the regulatory scope of the Machinery Directive, " machinery whose only power source is directly applied manual effort, with the exception of machines that are used for lifting loads, ..." (Directive 98/37/EC Article I, paragraph 2a). This limitation of the term thus excluded from many devices which are also machinery in alltagssprachlichem sense. In the text of the regulation even more exceptions and additions are defined.

The new Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC are separately incomplete machines, which are characterized in that they are intended to be installed in another machine or other partly completed machinery or assembled with them in conjunction with a single machine to make sense of the Directive.

Examples, with the consequent associated requirements of the EU directives:

• A clamping device for workpieces, which relates the power and the signals from a higher-level machine, not a machine. Reason: no function without parent machine. ( RL: Manufacturer's declaration ), with the new Machinery Directive ( as of 29 December 2009) is omitted, the term manufacturer's declaration and is replaced by declaration of incorporation.
• The pitchfork is not a machine. Reason: no attachment to machine (intended use), no moving parts, operated by muscle power, no stored energy. (RL: no labeling )

More specific definitions

• A machine to perform a task and the mechanical drive energy in motion transform ( = engine ) with corresponding power delivery to the power take-off or working side of the machine ( = machine).
• The ability to edit a material (drilling, turning, milling ) within the limits of possibilities, but without an exact definition: machine = machine tool.
• Machine, which was designed and built for a specific purpose: machine = special machine
• Machines whose purpose is the application of an applied energy in motion: machine = Motor
• Machines that serve to restore physical abilities: Machine = prosthesis

Chronology / historical examples

• The planned use of levers and wheel was the decisive factor for the development of machines
• 700 BC: Babylonian pumping stations in Assyria, engineering works
• 550 BC: Lathe, first machine tools
• 340 BC: Aristotle definition: lever, screw are called 'machine'
• 200 BC: Heron of Alexandria first heat engine
• 15th century: machine = Artwork ' ( Artist engineers example Leonardo da Vinci)
• 16th century: machine =, technical device ' (engineering example Galileo Galilei)
• 17th century simulations of nature with mechanical models, nature = 'machine' ( for example, in Descartes )
• 1712: greatly improved Thomas Newcomen first usable steam engine ( machine for heat engine ), in 1769 by James Watt
• 1789: The French Revolution changes the setting for mechanics and machine liberation of man from slavery by rejecting the worship of antiquity
• 1900: Distinction special machine, machine tool.
• 1957: Integration of the machine: man-machine system

Machines in mythology and literature

• In the literature of the Baroque and the Romantic and mythical creatures were called machines, in the poetry of antiquity, it was often the mythical creature that represented the mechanism by which advanced the story.
• Social Sciences and Psychology take mechanical aspects to present psychological or social issues as machines, such as the philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
• Hephaestus, the blacksmith god is said to have created mechanical women of gold, his most famous creations are the Pandora and the bronze giant Talos
• Rabbi Judah Loew said to have an artificial man, the golem, created from clay to protect the Jews of Prague from their enemies
• End of 18th, beginning of the 19th century was parallel to the technological revolution even in the romantic literature of the artificial man on the subject.
• Beginning of the 20th century, it remained the android or robot moving into the literature, Isaac Asimov formulated the " robot law " that define a behavior code for vending machines.
• Often, the devil appears in fairy tales associated with mills and other engineering structures, the term " devil's work " is often used when introducing a new technology.