Metal Working: History, Development, Importance, Processes, Use In Daily Life

Metals are everywhere. Our home equipments at our homes, the furniture in our offices, and the other structures that we see each time we go outdoors, all these things are entirely or partially made of metal. This just goes to show how big of a part metals play in our everyday life.

The process of metal working started years and years ago. Even pre-historic men are thought to have practiced this method. Even if it is a little bit hard to trace how exactly metal working started, maybe we can all agree that it predates history. Imagine how life it would be like for the ancient men if they didn't have metallic equipments to use for their cooking, hunting, and other activities. They were able to create sharp tools and knives out of pieces of rocks and metals. Since then, the whole thing has developed into something more advanced.

Normally, there are 3 categories of metal working. They are cutting, joining and forming. Every of these three processes even has smaller processes categorized under them.

1. Forming - this is done to deform or modify an object by using pressure, heat, or mechanical force. There are several kinds of forming processes and many of them are: plastic deforming, casting, & sheet metal forming. Under sheet metal forming, you would find bending, roll forming, spinning, drawing, rolling, stamping, shearing, raising and decambering.

2. Cutting - it's done by removing some part of a substance to modify its physical look. The material would generally be cut into two pieces, the waste part and the finished part. Cutting has several sub-processes with machining, burning, drilling, threading, turning, grinding, and filing.

3. Joining - examples of joining processes are brazing, soldering and welding. In brazing, you would require to melt a filler metal and change it into a capillary to set up minimum 2 work pieces. Once the filler metal comes into contact with the work pieces, it would solidify and create a hard and powerful joint. It is nearly the similar as soldering, but the former is done at temperature greater than 450 degrees Celsius. Soldering is done at temperatures less than 450 degrees Celsius. In welding, materials are attached by thermoplastics or metals. The work pieces are melted and are then added to the filler substance so that some sort of a molten material pool is formed. This would then be left to cool to form a sturdy joint.

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