The Collaborative International Dictionary
machine tool \machine tool\ n. A power-driven machine for cutting or shaping or finishing metals or other materials.
Tool \Tool\ (t[=oo]l), n. [OE. tol,tool. AS. t[=o]l; akin to Icel. t[=o]l, Goth. taijan to do, to make, taui deed, work, and perhaps to E. taw to dress leather. [root]64.]
An instrument such as a hammer, saw, plane, file, and the like, used in the manual arts, to facilitate mechanical operations; any instrument used by a craftsman or laborer at his work; an implement; as, the tools of a joiner, smith, shoe-maker, etc.; also, a cutter, chisel, or other part of an instrument or machine that dresses work.
A machine for cutting or shaping materials; -- also called machine tool.
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Hence, any instrument of use or service.
That angry fool . . . Whipping her horse, did with his smarting tool Oft whip her dainty self.
--Spenser. -
A weapon. [Obs.]
Him that is aghast of every tool.
--Chaucer. -
A person used as an instrument by another person; -- a word of reproach; as, men of intrigue have their tools, by whose agency they accomplish their purposes.
I was not made for a minion or a tool.
--Burks.
Wiktionary
n. (context mechanical engineering English) A tool, usually itself a machine and usually power-driven, used for machine#Verb. Examples include lathes, milling machines, shapers, planers, hobbers, drill presses, jig borers, and others.
WordNet
n. a powered machine for cutting or shaping or finishing metals or other materials
Wikipedia
A machine tool is a machine for shaping or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformation. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All machine tools have some means of constraining the workpiece and provide a guided movement of the parts of the machine. Thus the relative movement between the workpiece and the cutting tool (which is called the toolpath) is controlled or constrained by the machine to at least some extent, rather than being entirely "offhand" or "freehand".
The precise definition of the term machine tool varies among users, as discussed below. While all machine tools are "machines that help people to make things", not all factory machines are machine tools.
Today machine tools are typically powered other than by human muscle (e.g., electrically, hydraulically, or via line shaft), used to make manufactured parts (components) in various ways that include cutting or certain other kinds of deformation.
With their inherent precision, machine tools enabled the economical production of interchangeable parts.
Usage examples of "machine tool".
It had been a precision machine tool once, long ago, of a kind that could not be bought anywhere now.
The mold had long since cooled and was now broken open in the inert atmosphere of the first machine tool.
Every machine tool, every robox monkey, every muscle and sensor is programmed through the computer.
The same goes for bearings, motors, hydraulic parts, drives, spindles, cutters, gears, belts and the thousands of other things that go into a machine tool.
He found little interest, but happened to meet (in a City chop-house) a junior member of the staff of the unofficial Draka embassy, Marius de Witt, who had worked in the Naysmith Machine Tool Combine's design section in Diskarapur.