Best material testing books according to redditors

To be a little pedantic:

Hardness is the resistance of a material to forming an impression. Typically it is measured by poking material with something harder, unloading it and then measuring the size of the impression that you've made. 'Failure' in this case can either be yield (ductile materials) or cracking (brittle materials) beneath the indenter. In metals, you can roughly correlate macroscopic hardness (i.e. Vickers) with the macroscopic yield strength and in ceramics you can roughly correlate it with toughness.

The problem with correlating hardness with the peak force that a material can withstand before failure is that materials get harder as the size of your indent gets smaller (indenter size effect - look up the Nix-Gao model) and in addition the stress state under the indenter is quite complex. This makes understanding what fundamental deformation process you are testing difficult and therefore relating hardness to 'failure strength' could be misleading.

A simpler way to think about the problem is that of a (uni-axial) tensile test, i.e. pulling a piece of strip of metal. Toughness will describe the total amount of energy you put into the material to cause it to fail; whilst the strength of the material will be dictated by the maximum stress that you can apply to the material during any stage of the test. If you use a metallic wire then the material would probably have a (relatively) low strength, i.e. it would yield plastically with little effort, but the high ductility would absorb lots of energy, i.e. tough. To contrast, if you took strip of ceramic it would yield after lots of effort (high strength) but typically they can't deform plastically (brittle) so they fracture and will absorb relatively little energy (low toughness).

This just means you pick your material to suit your application. Compare steel and ceramic kitchen knifes - ceramic knife stays sharp for ages but will shatter if you drop it, steel knife will blunt quicker but will bounce around when you drop it. There's a series of (Ashby) plots you can use to select materials for different applications.

tl:dr Hardness tests can be linked to toughness and strength. Hardness is an easy to perform test (poke it with a stick) but difficult to interpret. Hard materials can either have high strength or high toughness. Strength and toughness are more interesting to compare and contrast.

Further reading/research: (Not all of which I've gotten to read yet. Some of which may be quite tangentially relevant to the discussion at hand along with the books and sites I mentioned above. Consider this more a list of books pertaining to the history of technology, machining, metrology, some general science and good engineering texts.)

Dan Gelbart's Youtube Channel

Engineerguy's Youtube Channel

Nick Mueller's Youtube Channel

mrpete222/tubalcain's youtube channel

Tom Lipton (oxtools) Youtube Channel

Suburban Tool's Youtube Channel

NYCNC's Youtube Channel

Computer History Museum's Youtube Channel

History of Machine Tools, 1700-1910 by Steeds

Studies in the History of Machine Tools by Woodbury

A History of Machine Tools by Bradley

Tools for the Job: A History of Machine Tools to 1950 by The Science Museum

A History of Engineering Metrology by Hume

Tools and Machines by Barnard

The Testing of Machine Tools by Burley

Modern machine shop tools, their construction, operation and manipulation, including both hand and machine tools: a book of practical instruction by Humphrey & Dervoort

Machine-Shop Tools and Methods by Leonard

A Measure of All Things: The Story of Man and Measurement by Whitelaw

Handbook of Optical Metrology: Principles and Applications by Yoshizawa

Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon by Gray

Machine Shop Training Course Vol 1 & 2 by Jones

A Century of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, 1882-1982

Numerical Control: Making a New Technology by Reintjes

History of Strength of Materials by Timoshenko

Rust: The Longest War by Waldman

The Companion Reference Book on Dial and Test Indicators: Based on our popular website www.longislandindicator.com by Meyer

Optical Shop Testing by Malacara

Lost Moon: The Preilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Lovell and Kruger

Kelly: More Than My Share of It All by Johnson & Smith

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Rich & Janos

Unwritten Laws of Engineering by King

Advanced Machine Work by Smith

Accurate Tool Work by Goodrich

Optical Tooling, for Precise Manufacture and Alignment by Kissam

The Martian: A Novel by Weir

Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain by Young Budynas & Sadegh

Materials Selection in Mechanical Design by Ashby

Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer by Shute

Cosmos by Sagan

Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners and Plumbing Handbook by Smith Carol Smith wrote a number of other great books such as Engineer to Win.

Tool & Cutter Sharpening by Hall

Handbook of Machine Tool Analysis by Marinescu, Ispas & Boboc

The Intel Trinity by Malone

Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals by Thompson

A Handbook on Tool Room Grinding

Tolerance Design: A Handbook for Developing Optimal Specifications by Creveling

Inspection and Gaging by Kennedy

Precision Engineering by Evans

Procedures in Experimental Physics by Strong

Dick's Encyclopedia of Practical Receipts and Processes or How They Did it in the 1870's by Dick

Flextures: Elements of Elastic Mechanisms by Smith

Precision Engineering by Venkatesh & Izman

Metal Cutting Theory and Practice by Stephenson & Agapiou

American Lathe Builders, 1810-1910 by Cope As mentioned in the above post, Kennth Cope did a series of books on early machine tool builders. This is one of them.

Shop Theory by Henry Ford Trade Shop

Learning the lost Art of Hand Scraping: From Eight Classic Machine Shop Textbooks A small collection of articles combined in one small book. Lindsay Publications was a smallish company that would collect, reprint or combine public domain source material related to machining and sell them at reasonable prices. They retired a few years ago and sold what rights and materials they had to another company.

How Round Is Your Circle?: Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet by Bryant & Sangwin

Machining & CNC Technology by Fitzpatrick

CNC Programming Handbook by Smid

Machine Shop Practice Vol 1 & 2 by Moltrecht

The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles A fantastic book with tons of free online material, labs, and courses built around it. This book could take a 6th grader interested in learning, and teach them the fundamentals from scratch to design a basic computer processor and programming a simple OS etc.

Bosch Automotive Handbook by Bosch

Trajectory Planning for Automatic Machines and Robots by Biagiotti & Melchiorri

The Finite Element Method: Its Basis and Fundamentals by Zhu, Zienkiewicz and Taylor

Practical Treatise on Milling and Milling Machines by Brown & Sharpe

Grinding Technology by Krar & Oswold

Principles of Precision Engineering by Nakazawa & Takeguchi

Foundations of Ultra-Precision Mechanism Design by Smith

I.C.S. Reference Library, Volume 50: Working Chilled Iron, Planer Work, Shaper and Slotter Work, Drilling and Boring, Milling-Machine Work, Gear Calculations, Gear Cutting

I. C. S. Reference Library, Volume 51: Grinding, Bench, Vise, and Floor Work, Erecting, Shop Hints, Toolmaking, Gauges and Gauge Making, Dies and Die Making, Jigs and Jig Making
and many more ICS books on various engineering, technical and non-technical topics.

American Machinists' Handbook and Dictionary of Shop Terms: A Reference Book of Machine-Shop and Drawing-Room Data, Methods and Definitions, Seventh Edition by Colvin & Stanley

Modern Metal Cutting: A Practical Handbook by Sandvik

Mechanical Behavior of Materials by Dowling

Engineering Design by Dieter and Schmidt

[Creative Design of Products and Systems by Saeed]()

English and American Tool Builders by Roe

Machine Design by Norton

Control Systems by Nise

That doesn't include some random books I've found when traveling and visiting used book stores. :)

I took an SEM & EDS class in graduate school here is the book we used. It’s really good. I am sure you can find the edition before this for free online somewhere

SEM Book

https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Alteration-Petrographic-Hydrothermal-Minerals/dp/0919216595

https://www.amazon.com/Ore-Textures-Interpretation-Roger-Taylor/dp/3642017827

These two are basically picture books with heaps of photos of altered rocks. Honestly though, recognising alteration is 90% experience, because your rocks will never look exactly like the photos. Everyone struggles a bit straight out of uni. Its harder now, but ideally move around a bit early in your career so you can see different rocks (and learn different ways of doing things).


https://www.amazon.com/Geology-Ore-Deposits-John-Guilbert/dp/1577664957

Guilbert & Park is good on alteration in terms of the minerals and chemical reactions involved, but its text with a few B&W diagrams.

There's two textbooks that are commonly used to teach material behavior and mechanical component design (such as springs, bearings, etc). Both these textbooks are what I had to learn with.

http://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Behavior-Materials-4th-Edition/dp/0131395068

http://www.amazon.com/Shigleys-Mechanical-Engineering-Design-McGraw-Hill/dp/0073398209

Both these textbooks are easily to obtain if yer a pirate, as well as the solution manuals. They start fairly basic, however, they quickly go quite in depth. Shigley will probably be most useful for you, but definitely flip through them both. There will be a lot of over-lap content wise. I doubt you will find any textbook material on starter springs specifically because they are a specialty spring, however, mechanics of springs still apply to them.

Have fun :p Component design can get very complicated and convoluted so try and not get frustrated if things don't make sense. Let me know if you have any more questions, and feel free to PM at anytime. I can't promise I'll have a good or correct answer for you all the time, but I can try. Component design was actually one of my least favorite classes so it's definitely not my strong suit, but I understand the majority of what is taught in Shigley's and Dowling's.

Yes, rev 4.

The people I know that have them picked them up in the $200-$300 range:

These are high but the ISBNs are right:
Ultrasonic Testing of Materials https://www.amazon.com/dp/0387512314/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_oGQdzbVVRM0TR

Something doesn't seem right. This is saying that at 10' pitch height, the ball would land 32" to the right of his left knee. From the knee point, it would travel 21.5" down, but 32" to the right? Seems to me at that angle, horizontal distance should be less than the vertical distance or maybe close to the same.

The flight time must also be off. It doesn't take 9 seconds to throw a ball 50' with a height of 10'.

I do like your A,B,C points. There is one other point and that's the apogee (Z, 120) - maybe it's accounted for but I don't spot it.

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I found this graph that may help, but it uses a 12' maximum height - what the rule used to be.

https://i.imgur.com/iFjnvlz.png

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It is from page 61 of this book. https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Baseball-Softball-Rod-Cross/dp/1441981128 Use "Search inside this book" for "Some pitched ball trajectories".

The use of lasers in science and engineering are as varied as the types of lasers available today. Pulsed lasers can have pulse widths which vary from as long as 10s of milliseconds to as short as femtoseconds. A pulsed laser is the normal choice when studying a system where the physics or chemistry of interest requires a short interaction time with the surface of matter under study. For industrial processes, pulsed lasers will normally provide greater intensities but only for shorter pulse widths. That is useful for ablation processes in semiconductors. The Continuous Wave (CW) lasers, in contrast, provide power which can be spatially distributed by scanning the beam over a larger surface. Those systems are used in laser welding and laser-based additive manufacturing. Try looking at the diagram on page 6 of the book by Bauerle and you'll get a feeling for the full scope of laser processing of materials.