Sometimes the most useful ideas are those that are taken for granted. Frequently, those ideas – like the mousetrap – are hard to improve on. Such is the case for the sun visor. Introduced in the 1930s, the visor became an automotive fixture that remains much as it was introduced over 90 years ago.

There is a plethora of automotive news this month. Never before have I seen so much significant news coming out of the auto industry. We will do our best to parse it in this column and in the podcast.

Today’s blast furnaces are distant cousins to the iron works of the early colonial era. One such operation – possibly the first successful iron works in the colonies – is the Tubal Works in Virginia. Started by Colonel Alexander Spotswood nearly 300 years ago, it later became known as Spotswood Furnace.

Because of its unique properties, aluminum has been of key importance in many of the developments of the past century. Why only a century or so? Because although aluminum is the most abundant metallic element in the earth’s crust (8%), metallic aluminum was produced for the first time just 200 years ago. It was not until 1886 that a commercial process was developed – the Hall-Heroult process – to refine aluminum from alumina.

To fish, you need the right equipment, which definitely includes a hook. Have you noticed there are hooks of various sizes and shapes, some with barbs and some without? Why do the differences exist?

Nonferrous metals require thermal treatment, but for many it is quite different from the more ubiquitous steel treatment. Let’s look at several common, everyday nonferrous products.

With this issue, we continue the circle of life for FORGE magazine. For those of us who have been around since 2006, you are aware that FORGE started from Industrial Heating (IH).

Did you know that Paul Revere was an early metallurgist? Revere’s early education was sufficient to enable him to later read the difficult metallurgical books of his day. His early training was by his father, who was a Boston silversmith. At 19 – upon the death of his father in 1754 – Revere took over the family silver shop. A perfectionist throughout his life, he went on to become one of America’s greatest artists in silver.

There are a number of ways to join two metals together. Most of these involve some form of welding or brazing, with many variations in these techniques. One of the welding categories is solid-state welding, and one of the eight solid-state welding techniques – explosion welding (EXW) – meets a unique metal-joining need.    
 

A tunneling project to extend a subway line created interest in the large Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) being used. Just how does this 23-foot-diameter machine with a length of 200 feet and a weight of 1.2 million pounds cut 35 feet of tunnel every day, and how does thermal processing play a role?