Category: Machine Tools

Ask any metal fabrication shop owner what the first two machines they purchased were, and often the answer will be “a shear and an ironworker.” Shears are important for cutting down sheet metal to size, while ironworkers offer a wide range of functions like punching, notching, and profile shearing. A person or machine that is […]

Those new to the art of metal fabrication are often surprised to learn that like a piece of wood, a piece of metal is also arranged in grains. And, as in woodworking, the grain structure in metals play a critical role in determining their properties and, consequently, their behavior while being shaped.

Metal grains are small, randomly oriented crystals that make up the polycrystalline structure of most metals. Understanding how grain structure affects metal fabrication is essential for everyone from senior engineers and materials scientists down to beginner press brake operators to be able to optimize fabrication processes and produce components with the right properties.

When it comes to fabrication presses—machines used for applying great force against a metallic workpiece—they’ve been around for a good 500 years, though the printing press appeared on the scene half a century earlier, and other pressing devices go back much further in history. It was the need to readily mint coins in the first years of the 1500s that influenced the application of the earlier developed technique of the screw press to form pieces of metal.