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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from hastaff works dot com where smart happens.
Speaker 1: Hi am Mars Brain with today's question, why do tools
Speaker 1: have drop forge stamped on them? What is drop forging?
Speaker 1: You see the words drop forge stamped on so many tools.
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder what the big deal is? Why
Speaker 1: do manufacturers want you to know that a tool is
Speaker 1: drop forged. If you've ever seen a blacksmith beating on
Speaker 1: a piece of red hot iron with a hammer, you've
Speaker 1: seen the simplest type of for ing. Striking a piece
Speaker 1: of hot metal with a hammer is forging, and blacksmiths
Speaker 1: have been doing this for centuries. As blacksmiths experimented with
Speaker 1: new techniques, they learned that complex shapes could be created
Speaker 1: by hammering metal into a dye. The dye contains the
Speaker 1: shape of the finished product. Modern manufacturers use either a
Speaker 1: falling hammer or a powered hammer to do the hammering
Speaker 1: rather than doing it by hand, and usually used dyes
Speaker 1: on both sides of the piece. This is drop forging.
Speaker 1: Manufacturers now use many different techniques to forge metal. Four
Speaker 1: of the most common include drop forging, which is hammering
Speaker 1: hot metal into dyes, press foraging. Instead of forcing hot
Speaker 1: metal into a dye with a hammer blow, it's pressed
Speaker 1: into the dye with hydraulic pressure, roll foraging, where the
Speaker 1: hot metal is pressed between two rollers, and cold forging.
Speaker 1: This is for smaller piece is and here the metal
Speaker 1: can be pressed into the die without heating it ahead
Speaker 1: of time. The reason why manufacturers want you to know
Speaker 1: that a tool is drop forged is because this tells
Speaker 1: you something about the strength and the durability of the tool.
Speaker 1: The other two ways to make a tool would be
Speaker 1: to cast it for molten metal or to machine it
Speaker 1: that has cut material away from a larger block of metal.
Speaker 1: The advantage of forging is that it improves the strength
Speaker 1: of the metal by aligning and stretching the grain structure
Speaker 1: inside the metal. A forge part will normally be stronger
Speaker 1: than a casting or a machine piece. Do you have
Speaker 1: any ideas or suggestions for this podcast. If so, please
Speaker 1: send me an email at podcast at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
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