Toolroom
Encyclopedia
The term toolroom can refer to three related concepts. The concepts have evolved over the past two centuries as technology itself has evolved.

Storing tools

The oldest and most concrete sense of the word toolroom is simply a room where tools are stored. The word used in this sense is attested in written English at least as early as 1829.

Making, repairing, and storing tools

The second sense (which largely overlaps with the most basic sense above) is a room where more than simply storage occurs. In this sense, tools are made, repaired, inventoried (kept track of), and distributed for use throughout the rest of a factory. This extension of sense reflects the development of greater systemization in manufacturing. During the 19th century, there gradually developed the division of labor whereby the people who made, repaired, kept records of, stored, and retrieved tools were not necessarily the same people who used the tools to do the manufacturing work itself. Examples of division of labor had existed in prior centuries, but most manufacturing had been done on a craft basis, where there had been no need for the idea of a toolroom separate from the rest of the workshop (or a word to name it).

The two senses above can also be conveyed by the word toolcrib (sometimes styled tool-crib or tool crib). Although the word toolroom is still sometimes used today in those simpler senses (and probably always will be because of the obvious correspondence of word to literal meaning), mechanical engineers, toolmakers
Tool and die maker
Tool and die makers are workers in the manufacturing industry who make jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, machine tools, cutting tools , gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing processes...

, and other trained machinists usually use the word in its abstract tool-and-die sense, which is discussed below. This restriction of sense is aided by using another word (such as toolcrib) to refer to the simpler, concrete senses.

Tool-and-die facilities and methods

The third sense, which is how the word toolroom is usually used today in the jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...

 of engineering and manufacturing, is everything related to tool-and-die
Tool and die maker
Tool and die makers are workers in the manufacturing industry who make jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, machine tools, cutting tools , gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing processes...

 facilities and methods, in contrast to the factory floor and production line activity. For people not familiar with these fields, in order to understand the specialist usage, some explanation is needed:

Within the general field of machining
Machining
Conventional machining is a form of subtractive manufacturing, in which a collection of material-working processes utilizing power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, are used with a sharp cutting tool to physical remove material to achieve a desired...

 there is a rough but recurring division between (a) toolroom practice and (b) production practice (the making of large numbers of duplicate parts). It is the difference between manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

 itself and the tool-and-die work
Tool and die maker
Tool and die makers are workers in the manufacturing industry who make jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, machine tools, cutting tools , gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing processes...

 that is done in support of the manufacturing. Anecdotal examples of similar distinctions can probably be found here and there throughout human history, but as a widespread part of the "fabric" of material culture, this distinction (and the terminology with which to talk about it) has evolved since the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

, and most especially since the advent of armory practice
American system of manufacturing
The American system of manufacturing was a set of manufacturing methods that evolved in the 19th century. It involved semi-skilled labor using machine tools and jigs to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance, which could be assembled with a minimum of time...

 and later mass production
Mass production
Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...

.

A good, simplistic way to summarize the change in ideas is to compare the making of a certain product in different time periods. In 1750, a rifle
Rifle
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

 was made in a workshop by a craftsman using hand tools, and if he needed a new tool, it is likely that he would make it himself using the same tools and methods that he would use to make his product, the rifle (smithy, files
File (tool)
A file is a metalworking and woodworking tool used to cut fine amounts of material from a workpiece. It most commonly refers to the hand tool style, which takes the form of a steel bar with a case hardened surface and a series of sharp, parallel teeth. Most files have a narrow, pointed tang at one...

, woodcarving knives, etc.) This type of craftsmanship can still be done today, but it is expensive in terms of skilled labor time per unit of output, and therefore it implies small total output volume and high unit price. However, today the way to make rifles in large quantity with low unit price is to first do the tool-and-die work (toolroom work) (that is, make, or have someone else make, machine tools, jigs, and fixtures), and then use those specialized tools to mass-produce the rifles in an automated way that involves no toolroom methods.

Another example, instead of comparing different centuries, simply compares different methods of toolpath control that could be chosen today: If you need a certain hole location on each part for your drill bit
Drill bit
Drill bits are cutting tools used to create cylindrical holes. Bits are held in a tool called a drill, which rotates them and provides torque and axial force to create the hole. Specialized bits are also available for non-cylindrical-shaped holes....

, will you dial it carefully by hand many times (once for each part produced), or will you dial it carefully by hand only once—while making a fixture for subsequent drilling to be quickly and effortlessly guided by?

The manufacturing of small batches has often presented the biggest challenge to this division of methods. When only a small batch of output is demanded, will one (a) produce each piece using "custom" methods (handcrafting or toolroom-style layout and machining), which drives up unit cost; or (b) maintain the capital-cost-intensive toolroom-production division, which also drives up unit costs in its own ways? In other words, is it worth one's time to make a fixture, and is it worth tying up a drill press's availability by setting it up for dedicated use with that fixture? The drill press may be needed tomorrow for a different part, with a different setup. For 100 parts, it is worth it to make a fixture and tie up a machine's availability. For 5 parts, maybe one should just make each of the 5 using toolroom-style layout and toolpath control.

The evolution of IT
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 and its integration into manufacturing is changing the questions and equations still further. For example, CNC and robotics
Robotics
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...

 have led the way to rapid prototyping
Rapid prototyping
Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. The first techniques for rapid prototyping became available in the late 1980s and were used to produce models and prototype parts. Today, they are used for a much wider range of applications...

 and instant manufacturing, which shift the toolroom-production division by giving an up-front toolroom investment the flexibility to be quickly and easily used for any product design, with batch size irrelevant.

In large corporations there may be a very distinct division of labor between toolroom work and production machining, with different employees for each, whereas job-shop work is often a blend of toolroom work and production work, because each project requires some of both, and the same employees may "wear each hat" in sequence.

On the other hand, if CADCAM and instant manufacturing are developed to their full potential, the paradigm would become moot, as after the initial building of the machine tool, there is only the running of an endless variety of programs by it, with no toolroom work left to be done.

From a room to a concept

As with the term emergency room
Emergency department
An emergency department , also known as accident & emergency , emergency room , emergency ward , or casualty department is a medical treatment facility specialising in acute care of patients who present without prior appointment, either by their own means or by ambulance...

, the origins of the term toolroom lie in activities that occurred literally in one room
Room
A room is any distinguishable space within a structure.Room may also refer to:* Room , by Emma Donoghue* Room, Nepal* Room for PlayStation Portable, a social networking service* Thomas Gerald Room , Australian mathematician...

, but like emergency room, the term has been figuratively extended in both substantive
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

 and adjectival
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

senses to all such places and the methods used there, regardless of the physical space.
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