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4.4.2. Mold Making:

In the casting process a pattern is made in the shape of the desired part. This pattern is made out
of wax, wood, plastic or metal. Simple designs can be made in a single piece or solid pattern. More
complex designs are made in two parts, called split patterns.

A split pattern has a top or upper section, called a cope, and a bottom or lower section called a drag.
Both solid and split patterns can have cores inserted to complete the final part shape.

These mold processes include:

Sand casting — Green or resin bonded sand mold.

Lost-foam casting — Polystyrene pattern with a mixture of ceramic and sand mold.
Investment casting — Wax or similar sacrificial pattern with a ceramic mold.
Ceramic mold casting — Plaster mold.
V-process casting — Vacuum is used in conjunction with thermoformed plastic to form sand
molds. No moisture, clay or resin is needed for sand to retain shape.
Die casting — Metal pattern.
Billet (ingot) casting — Simple mold for producing ingots of metal normally for use in other
foundries.

4.4.3. Pouring:

In a foundry, molten metal is poured into molds. Pouring can be

accomplished with gravity, or it may be assisted with a vacuum or
pressurized gas.

Many modern foundries use robots or automatic pouring machines for

pouring molten metal. Traditionally, molds were poured by hand
using ladles.

4.4.4. Finishing:

The final step in the process usually involves grinding, sanding, or machining the component in
order to achieve the desired dimensional accuracies, physical shape and surface finish.

Removing the remaining gate material, called a gate stub, is usually done using a grinder or sanding.
These processes are used because their material removal rates are slow enough to control the
amount of material. These steps are done prior to any final machining.

After grinding, any surfaces that require tight dimensional control are machined. Many castings
are machined in CNC milling centers. The reason for this is that these processes have better
dimensional capability and repeatability than many casting processes.

Painting components to prevent corrosion and improve visual appeal is common. Some foundries will
assemble their castings into complete machines or sub-assemblies. Other foundries weld multiple
castings or wrought metals together to form a finished product.

4.5. Forging:

Forging is a manufacturing process involving the shaping of metal using localized compressive
forces. Forging is often classified according to the temperature: "cold", "warm", or "hot" forging.

Forged parts can range in weight from less than a kilogram to 580 metric tons. Forged parts usually
require further processing to achieve a finished part.

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Hot metal ingots being loaded into a hammer forge.

Some metals may be forged cold, but iron and steel are almost always hot forged. Hot forging
prevents the work hardening that would result from cold forging, which would increase the difficulty
of performing secondary machining operations on the piece.

While work hardening may be desirable in some circumstances, other methods of hardening the
piece, such as heat treating, are generally more economical and more controllable. Alloys that are
amenable to precipitation hardening, such as most aluminium alloys and titanium, can be hot forged,
followed by hardening.

A forging press, often just called a press, is used for press forging. There are two main types, the
mechanical and hydraulic presses:

Mechanical presses - function by using cams, cranks and/or toggles to produce a preset (a
predetermined force at a certain location in the stroke) and reproducible stroke. Mechanical presses
are faster than their hydraulic counterparts (up to 50 strokes per minute). Their capacities range
from 300 to 18,000 short tons-force.

Hydraulic presses - use fluid pressure and a piston to generate force. The advantages of a hydraulic
press over a mechanical press are its flexibility and greater capacity. The disadvantages include a
slower, larger, and costlier machine to operate.

The roll forging, upsetting, and automatic hot forging processes all use specialized machinery.

4.5.1. Wrought Iron:

Wrought iron is an iron alloy with very low carbon content in comparison to steel, and has
fibrous inclusions, known as slag. This is what gives it a "grain" resembling wood, which is visible
when it is etched or bent to the point of failure.

Wrought iron is tough, malleable, ductile and easily welded. Historically, it was known as
"commercially pure iron", however, it no longer qualifies because current standards for commercially
pure iron require a carbon content of less than 0.008 %.

Before the development of effective methods of steelmaking and the availability of large quantities of
steel, wrought iron was the most common form of malleable iron. Demand for wrought iron reached
its peak in the 1860s with the adaptation of ironclad warships and railways, but then declined as mild
steel became more available.

A modest amount of wrought iron was used as a raw material for manufacturing of steel, which was
mainly to produce swords, cutlery, chisels, axes and other edge tools, as well as, springs and files.

Wrought iron is no longer produced on a commercial scale. Many products described as wrought iron,
such as guard rails, garden furniture and gates, are made of mild steel.

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The items produced from wrought iron include rivets, nails, wire, chains, railway couplings, water and
steam pipes, nuts, bolts, horseshoes, handrails, straps, roof trusses and ornamental ironwork.

Many structural metals undergo some special treatment to modify their properties, so that they will
perform better for a different use. This treatment can include mechanical working, such as rolling or
forging, alloying and/or thermal treatments.

As an example, commercially pure aluminum (1100) has a tensile strength of around 13,000 psi,
which limits its usefulness in structural applications. However, by cold-working aluminum, its strength
can be approximately doubled.

Strength increases are obtained by adding alloying metals such as manganese, silicon, copper,
magnesium and zinc and many aluminum alloys are strengthened by heat treatment. Some heat-
treatable aluminum alloys obtain tensile strengths that can exceed 100,000 psi.

4.6. Alloying:

Only a few elements are widely used commercially in their pure form. Generally, other elements are
introduced in the various forms of alloys, to produce greater strength, improve corrosion
resistance or simply left as impurities from the refining process.

The addition of other elements into a metal is called alloying and the resulting metal is called an alloy.
Even if the added elements are nonmetals, alloys may still have metallic properties.

Copper alloys were produced very early in our history. Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was the
first alloy known. It was easy to produce by simply adding tin to molten copper. Tools and weapons
made of this alloy were stronger than pure copper ones.

The typical alloying elements in some common metals are presented in the table below:

Alloy Composition
Brass Copper, Zinc
Bronze Copper, Zinc, Tin
Pewter Tin, Copper, Bismuth, Antimony.
Cast Iron Iron, Carbon, Manganese, Silicon.
Steel Iron, Carbon (plus small amounts of other elements)
Stainless Steel Iron, Chromium, Nickel.

The properties of alloys can be manipulated by varying composition. Steel formed from iron and
carbon can vary in hardness, depending on the amount of carbon added, the way it was processed
and a second alloy element is added, two basically different structural changes are possible.

Solid solution strengthening occurs, when the atoms of the new element form a solid solution with the
original element, but there is still only one phase.

The term ‘phase’ refers to that region of space occupied by a physically homogeneous material. The
atoms of the new elements form a new second phase. The entire microstructure may change to this
new phase or two phases may be present.

4.7. Solid Solution Strengthening:

Solid solution strengthening involves the addition of other metallic elements that will dissolve in
the parent lattice and cause distortions because of the difference in atom size between the parent
metal and the solute metal.

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Substitutions of impurity atoms are usually close in size (within approximately 15%) to the bulk atom.
Interstitial impurity atoms are much smaller than the atoms in the bulk matrix and fit into the open
space between the bulk atoms of the lattice structure.

Since the impurity atoms are smaller or larger than the surrounding atoms they introduce tensile or
compressive lattice strains. They disrupt the regular arrangement of ions and make it more difficult
for the layers to slide over each other.

This makes the alloy stronger and less ductile than the pure metal. For example, an alloy of 30%
nickel raises the cast tensile strength of copper from 25,000 psi to 55,000 psi.

4.8. Multiphase Metals:

Another method of strengthening metals is adding elements that have no or partial solubility in the
parent metal. The addition of tin, zinc, or aluminum to copper will result in an alloy with
increased strength, but alloying with lead or bismuth with result in a lower strength alloy.

This will result in the appearance of a second phase distributed throughout the crystal or between
crystals. However, secondary phases can raise or reduce the strength of an alloy. The properties of
a polyphase (two of more phase) material depend on the nature, amount, size, shape, distribution,
and orientation of the phases.

Phases can be seen on a microscopic scale with an optical microscope after the surface has been
properly polished and etched. Greek letters are commonly used to distinguish the different solid
phases in a given alloy.

Below is a micrograph take at 125x of lead-tin alloy composed in two phases. The light colored
regions are a tin-rich phase and the dark colored regions are a lead-rich phase.

4.9. Thermal Treatments (Heat-Treating):

Heat-treating is a term used to describe all of the controlled heating and cooling operations
performed on a material in the solid state for the purpose of altering its microstructure and/or
properties. The major objectives of the different kinds of thermal treatments are:

Soften the material for improved workability.

Increase the strength or hardness of the material.
Increase the toughness or resistance to fracture of the material.

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Stabilize mechanical or physical properties against changes that might occur during exposure
to service environments.
Insure part dimensional stability.
Relieve undesirable residual stresses induced during part fabrication.

Different metals respond to treatment at different temperatures. Each metal has a specific chemical
composition, so changes in physical and structural properties take place at different and critical
temperatures. Depending on the thermal treatment used, the atomic structure and/or
microstructure of a material may change due to movement of dislocations, an increase or decrease
in solubility of atoms, an increase in grain size, the formation of new grains of the same or different
phase, a change in the crystal structure, and others mechanisms.

4.9.1. Precipitation Hardening:

An approach often taken to develop alloys for strength is reaching an alloy with a structure that
consists of particles (which impede dislocation movement) dispersed in a ductile matrix, obtained by
choosing an alloy with a single phase at elevated temperature, but on cooling will preci pitate another
phase in the matrix.

A thermal process is developed to produce the desired distribution of precipitate in the matrix and
when the alloy is strengthened by this thermal treatment, it is called precipitation strengthening
or hardening.

Precipitation hardening consists of three main steps: solution treatment, quenching, and aging.

Solution treatment - involves heating the alloy to a temperature that allows the alloying atoms
(called the solute) resulting in a homogeneous solid solution of one phase.

Quenching - rapidly cools the material so fast and freezes the atoms that the atoms of the alloying
elements do not have time to diffuse out of the solution.

Aging - is the process where the solute particles diffuse out of the solution and into clusters that
distort and strengthen the material.

The precipitation hardening process for a copper-aluminum alloy is shown graphically in the
image below. The phase diagram is simply a map showing the structure of phases present, as the
temperature and overall composition of the alloy are varied. The images on the right in the image
show the resulting microstructure at each step in the process.

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4.9.2. Common Heat-Treating Processes:

The more common terms used in worldwide industrial heat-treating are indicated below:

Age Hardening - is a relatively low-temperature heat treatment process that strengthens a material
by causing the precipitation of components or phases of alloy from a super-saturated solid solution.

Annealing - is a softening process in which metals are heated and then allowed to cool slowly. The
purpose of annealing is to soften the material for improve machinability, formability, and sometimes
to control magnetic properties.

Normalizing - is much like annealing, but the cooling process is much faster. This result is increased
strength but less ductility in the metal. Its purpose is to refine grain structure, produce more uniform
mechanical properties, and sometimes to relieve internal and surface stresses.

Precipitation Heat-Treatment - is the three step process of solution treating, quenching, and age
hardening to increase the strength or hardness of an alloy.

Solution Heat-Treatment - involves heating the material to a temperature that puts all the
elements in solid solution and then cooling very rapidly to freeze the atoms in place.

Stress Relieving - is a low temperature heat treat process that is used to reduce the level of residual
stresses in a material.

Tempering - involves gently heating a hardened metal and allowing it to cool slowly will produce a
metal that is still hard but also less brittle. This process is known as tempering.

Quenching - is the rapid cooling of a hot material. The medium used to quench the material can vary
from forced air, oil, water and others. Many steels are hardened by heating and quenching.
Quenching results in a metal that is very hard, but also brittle.

5. Density:

The space the mass occupies is its volume, and the mass per unit of volume is its density. Mass
(m) is a fundamental measure of the amount of matter. Weight (w) is a measure of the force
exerted by a mass and this force is force is produced by the acceleration of gravity.

Mathematically, density is defined as mass divided by volume:

Where,

ρ is the density, m is the mass, and V is the volume.

Mass density is a unit of mass per unit of volume. As there are many units of mass and volume
covering many different magnitudes there are a large number of units for mass density in use.

Therefore, on the surface of the earth, the mass of an object is determined by dividing the weight of
an object by 9.8 m/s 2 (~32 ft/s²), the acceleration of gravity.

The SI units for density are kg/m³. The imperial (U.S.) units are lb/ft³ or slugs/ft³.

Example of water density at:

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Temperature Density
(°F) (°C) (lb/ft³) (kg/m³)

32 (0) 62.418 (0.998)

40 (4,4) 62.426 (0.999)

OBS.: While people often use pounds per cubic foot as a measure of density in the U.S., pounds are
really measures of force, not mass. Slugs are the correct measure of mass. You can multiply
slugs by 32.2 for a rough value in pounds.

Example: Maximum density of water at 4°C (39.2 °F) = 1,000 kg/m³ ~ 1.940 slugs/ft³.

Densities for some materials at atmospheric temperature:

Density
Material
(lb/ft³) (kg/m³)

Clay, dry 100 1600

Clay, wet 110 1760

Gravel, dry 105 1680

Gravel, Wet 125 2000

Limestone 160 2560

Sand, dry 97 1555

Sand, wet 119 1905

6. Specific Gravity (SG):

Specific Gravity is the ratio of density of a substance compared to the density of fresh water at
4°C (39.2° F). At this temperature the density of water is 1000 kg/m³ (62.4 lb/ft³) or 1.0 kg/cm³.

Then the Specific Gravity is the same, unity = 1.0. The Specific Gravity is a ratio, so it has no units.

Example:

If the density of iron is 7850 kg/m³ - then, the Specific Gravity of iron is:

SG = (7850 kg/m³) / (1000 kg/m³) =

SG = 7.85

Specific gravity values for a few common substances are: Au, 19.3; mercury, 13.6; alcohol, 0.7893;
benzene, 0.8786.

An object will float in water if its density is less than the density of water and sink if its density is
greater than that of water. Similarly, an object with specific gravity less than 1.0 will float and
those with a specific gravity greater than one will sink.

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7. Corrosion:

Corrosion involves the deterioration of a material as it reacts with its environment. Corrosion is the
primary means by which metals deteriorate. Corrosion literally consumes the material reducing load
carrying capability and causing stress concentrations.

The corrosion process is usually electrochemical in nature, having the essential features of a battery.
Corrosion is a natural process that commonly occurs because unstable materials, such as refined
metals want to return to a more stable compound.

For example, some metals, such as gold and silver, can be found in the earth in their natural, metallic
state and they have little tendency to corrode. Iron is a moderately active metal and corrodes readily
in the presence of water. The natural state of iron is iron oxide and the most common iron ore is
Hematite with a chemical composition of Fe203. Rust, the most common corrosion of iron, also has
a composition of Fe2O3.

Corrosion involves two chemical processes: Oxidation and Reduction Reaction:

Oxidation - is the process of stripping electrons from an atom and reduction occurs when an electron
is added to an atom. The oxidation process takes place at an area known as the anode.

Positively charged atoms leave the solid surface of the anode, and enter into an electrolyte (may be
water) as ions. The ions leave their corresponding negative charge in the form of electrons in the
metal which travel to the location of the cathode through a conductive path.

Reduction Reaction - takes place at the corresponding cathode, and consumes the free electrons.
The electrical balance of the circuit is restored at the cathode when the electrons react with
neutralizing positive ions, such as hydrogen ions, in the electrolyte.

From this description, it can be seen that there are four essential components that are needed for a
corrosion reaction to proceed. These components are an anode, a cathode, an electrolyte with
oxidizing species, and some direct electrical connection between the anode and cathode.

Although atmospheric air is the most common environmental electrolyte, natural waters, such as
seawater rain, as well as man-made solutions, are the environments most frequently associated with
corrosion problems.

Aluminum is a relatively reactive metal; among structural metals, only beryllium and magnesium are
more reactive. Aluminum owes its excellent corrosion resistance to the barrier oxide film that is
bonded strongly to the surface, and if damaged, reforms immediately in most environments. On a
surface freshly abraded and exposed to air, the protective film is only 10 Angstroms thick but highly
effective at protecting the metal from corrosion.

8. Mechanical Properties:

The mechanical properties of a material are those properties that involve a reaction to an applied
load. The mechanical properties of metals determine the range of usefulness of a material and
establish the service life that can be expected. Mechanical properties are also used to help classify
and identify material. The most common properties considered are strength, ductility, hardness,
impact resistance, and fracture toughness.

Most structural materials are anisotropic, which means that their material properties vary with
orientation. The variation in properties can be due to directionality in the microstructure (texture)
from forming or cold working operation, the controlled alignment of fiber reinforcement and a variety
of other causes.

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