Audible dot com is the leading provider of downloadable digital audio books and spoken word entertainment. Audible has over one hundred thousand titles to choose from to be downloaded to your iPod or MP three player. Go to audible podcast dot com slash brain stuff to get a free audio book download of your choice when you sign up today. Welcome to Brainstuff from hastaff works dot com where smart happens. Hi am Mars Brain with today's question, why do tools
have drop forge stamped on them? What is drop forging? You see the words drop forge stamped on so many tools. It makes you wonder what the big deal is? Why do manufacturers want you to know that a tool is drop forged. If you've ever seen a blacksmith beating on a piece of red hot iron with a hammer, you've seen the simplest type of for ing. Striking a piece of hot metal with a hammer is forging, and blacksmiths
have been doing this for centuries. As blacksmiths experimented with new techniques, they learned that complex shapes could be created by hammering metal into a dye. The dye contains the shape of the finished product. Modern manufacturers use either a falling hammer or a powered hammer to do the hammering rather than doing it by hand, and usually used dyes on both sides of the piece. This is drop forging.
Manufacturers now use many different techniques to forge metal. Four of the most common include drop forging, which is hammering hot metal into dyes, press foraging. Instead of forcing hot metal into a dye with a hammer blow, it's pressed into the dye with hydraulic pressure, roll foraging, where the hot metal is pressed between two rollers, and cold forging. This is for smaller piece is and here the metal can be pressed into the die without heating it ahead
of time. The reason why manufacturers want you to know that a tool is drop forged is because this tells you something about the strength and the durability of the tool. The other two ways to make a tool would be to cast it for molten metal or to machine it that has cut material away from a larger block of metal. The advantage of forging is that it improves the strength of the metal by aligning and stretching the grain structure inside the metal. A forge part will normally be stronger
than a casting or a machine piece. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast. If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff block on the how stuff works dot com home page. Streaming TV shows, movies directly to your home is a breeze with Netflix. As a Netflix member, you can instantly watch TV and movies
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