The main bulk of my learning in this area is due to the materials and processes module. (Click link below)
http://mickied503.weebly.com/hot-metal.html
Heat treating metal made me realise gaps in my knowledge and a lot of my original assumptions were in most way incorrect.
http://mickied503.weebly.com/hot-metal.html
Heat treating metal made me realise gaps in my knowledge and a lot of my original assumptions were in most way incorrect.
- I initially thought of heat treating metal as only a way of bending and shaping it, however after a session in the metal room learnt it is also used to join metals together. Contrary to the idea of making metal more malleable i also did not know that metal can be heated to harden it which i found quite surprising
- I was very surprised just how flexible copper was after being annealed and did not think a metal could be shaped by hand? which seems ridiculous now. As can be seen from the image below, I was amazed how easily annealed copper could be shaped to form very fluid looking shapes, something i had not invisioned before.
- With the annealing process i was surprised that some metal could be bent after being cooled down? i assumed it could only be bent whilst glowing hot and then hammered into shape as with forging.
- The process of forging steel was pretty much what i thought heat treatment of all metal was, which i now know to be untrue. What i didn't realise with forging however was just how difficult it was! I expected the metal to hold the heat a lot longer than it did and had to keep reheating. In terms of shaping i also thought this would be a lot easier, below is the results of my first forging experience. it took rather long to get a good curve although i guess this is lack of skills on my part.
forging metal... was more difficult than i thought