Book Description

Machinery’s Handbook has served as the principal reference work in metalworking, design and manufacturing facilities, and in technical schools and colleges throughout the world, for nearly 100 years of continuous publication. Throughout this period, the intention of the Handbook editors has always been to create a comprehensive and practical tool, combining the most basic and essential aspects of sophisticated manufacturing practice. A tool to be used in much the same way that other tools are used, to make and repair products of high quality, at the lowest cost, and in the shortest time possible.

The essential basics, material that is of proven and everlasting worth, must always be included if the Handbook is to continue to provide for the needs of the manufacturing community. But, it remains a difficult task to select suitable material from the almost unlimited supply of data pertaining to the manufacturing and mechanical engineering fields, and to provide for the needs of design and production departments in all sizes of manufacturing plants and workshops, as well as those of job shops, the hobbyist, and students of trade, technical, and engineering schools.

The editors rely to a great extent on conversations and written communications with users of the Handbook for guidance on topics to be introduced, revised, lengthened, shortened, or omitted. At the request of users, in 1997 the first ever large-print or “desktop” edition of the Handbook was published, followed in 1998 by the publication of the first Machinery’s Handbook CD-ROM including hundreds of additional pages of material restored from earlier editions. The large-print and CD-ROM editions have since become permanent additions to the growing family of Machinery’s Handbook products.

Regular users of the Handbook will quickly discover some of the many changes embodied in the present edition. One is the combined Mechanics and Strength of Materials section, arising out of the two former sections of similar name. The Plastics section, formerly a separate thumb tab, has been incorporated into the Properties of Materials section.“Old style” numerals, in continuous use in the first twenty-five editions, are now used only in the index for page references, and in cross references throughout the text. The entire text of this edition, including all the tables and equations, has been reset, and a great many of the numerous figures have been redrawn. The current edition has expanded to 2800 pages.

The 29th edition of the Handbook contains major revisions of existing content, as well as new material on a variety of topics. The detailed tables of contents located at the beginning of each section have been expanded and fine tuned to simplify locating topics; numerous major sections have been extensively reworked and renovated throughout, including Mathematics, Mechanics and Strength of Materials, Properties of Materials, Dimensioning, Gaging and Measuring, Machining Operations, Manufacturing Process, Fasteners, Threads and Threading, and Machine Elements. New and recent material in this edition include a new section on micromachining, expanded material on calculation of hole coordinates, an introduction to metrology, further contributions to the sheet metal and presses section, shaft alignment, taps and tapping, helical coil screw thread inserts, solid geometry, distinguishing between bolts and screws, statistics, calculating thread dimensions, keys and keyways, miniature screws, metric screw threads, and fluid mechanics. Other subjects in the Handbook that are new or have been recently revised, expanded, or updated are lubrication, CNC programming and CNC thread cutting, metric wrench clearances, ANSI and ISO drafting practices, and ISO surface texture.

The metric content of the Handbook has been greatly expanded in the 29th edition. Throughout the book, where practical, metric units are shown adjacent to the US customary units in the text. Many formulas are now presented with equivalent metric expressions, and additional metric examples have been added.

The large-print edition is identical to the traditional toolbox edition, only the size is increased by a comfortable 140% for easier reading, making it ideal as a desktop reference. Other than size, there are no differences between the toolbox and large-print editions.