Blapcewi
You've got a better start than many, with a real lead sentence, references, and external links. You have done a good job on filling in the basics: there are tens of thousands of articles which don't make it that far within a year's time.
My best recommendation would be to familiarize yourself with the Manual of Style since that is the gold standard for writing articles on Wikipedia. MOS is huge and has many subarticles, but scanning the main parts pertinent to all articles is a good idea. The page on article development at WP:IA can be useful too. If you want more user input, there is Requests for feedback and when your article is starting to get really good, there's Peer review.
I am not a reviewer or machinist, but my first impressions on your article are that you might want to better define what free machining is in the lead, besides what it involves. You might link to a shear article or two, as the topic of shear is likely more unknown to the average reader than the elements you link to. For example there is a sheer stress article that might be appropriate (I can't say for sure, perhaps it's not on-topic). Also see if there are other linkable articles for other concepts in the article that aren't obvious or are of additional interest. As long as you don't overdo it and link every third word, judicious wikilinking improves an article. Other than that, well, I think the article headers might need rewording in conjunction with improved wording flow in the main content, but as I say, I'm not an "official" article reviewer and my suggestions may be improperly weighted. (copied to your talk page) Michael Devore 15:47, 15 October 2007 (UTC)