2030 – 01 – How Important are Metal Properties?

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Each day, you make choices based on a material’s properties. You might choose between paper and plastic grocery bags, or paper plates as opposed to plastic, even between aluminum pop cans and glass bottles. Like you, manufacturers make choices based on the properties of the materials they’re working with. It is the properties of a metal itself that determine if it is the correct metal for the job.
The mechanical properties of a material will tell you how it will respond to specific outside forces. They help you understand how a metal will bend, break, dent, scratch and stretch. When you manufacture parts, you shape them by exerting external forces on the workpiece.
If you’re going to be working with saws and saw blades, you need to know how forces are going to affect certain materials – and what a metals’ properties tell you about how to work with that metal.