This chapter covers the practical aspects of machining, particularly for turning, milling, drilling, and grinding operations. It begins with a discussion on machinability and its impact on quality and cost. It then describes the dimensional and surface finish tolerances that can be achieved through conventional machining methods, the mechanics of chip formation, the factors that affect tool wear, the selection and use of cutting fluids, and the determination of machining parameters based on force and power requirements. It also includes information on nontraditional machining processes such as electrical discharge, abrasive jet, and hydrodynamic machining, laser and electron beam machining, ultrasonic impact grinding, and electrical discharge wire cutting.

After pouring, castings are allowed to solidify and cool. They are later removed from the molds in the shakeout operation. A series of activities then follow, which are generally referred to as finishing and heat treatment. These activities can be broadly categorized as shakeout, abrasive blast cleaning, removal of risers, ingates, and discontinuities, rough inspection, removal of discontinuities, finishing welding, heat treatment, and final visual, dimensional, and NDT inspection. This chapter provides a detailed discussion on these activities.

This chapter discusses the basic principles of friction and the factors that must be considered when determining its effect on moving bodies in contact. It provides an extensive amount of friction data, including static and kinetic friction coefficients for numerous combinations of engineering materials and coatings. It also describes the causes and effects of the most common forms of wear, the conditions under which they occur, the role of lubrication, and wear testing methods.

This chapter covers mechanical properties, microstructures, chemical compositions, manufacturing processes, and engineering of gating practices for several applications of gray, white, and alloyed cast irons. It begins with a description of material standards, followed by a section providing information on the practice of stress relieving. Next, the chapter details various ways of eliminating slag entrainment while designing gating and venting systems. Several factors related to the establishment of the optimum pouring rate and time are then covered. Further, the chapter discusses the technology of unalloyed or low-alloyed gray iron castings and white iron and high-alloyed cast irons. Finally, it describes the casting defects that are associated with cast iron and the processes involved in solving these defects. The article includes a number of figures illustrating the topics discussed.

This chapter is a detailed account of the general characteristics and effects of and the methods for preventing or reducing different categories of wear failures, namely abrasive (erosive, grinding, and gouging), adhesive, and fretting wear.

This chapter discusses the causes and effects of wear along with prevention methods. It covers abrasive, erosive, erosion-corrosion, grinding, gouging, adhesive, and fretting wear. It also discusses various forms of contact-stress fatigue, including subsurface-origin fatigue, surface-origin fatigue, subcase-origin fatigue (spalling fatigue), and cavitation fatigue.

This article discusses the applications, compositions, and properties of cemented carbides and cermets. It explains how alloying elements, grain size, and binder content influence the properties and behaviors of cemented carbides. It also discusses the properties of steel-bonded carbides, or cermets, the various grades available, and the types of applications for which they are suited.

This chapter defines steel castings, explains when to use steel castings, gives an overview of casting processes, and gives examples of suitable applications for cast steel parts.

This article provides an overview of austenitic manganese steels. It describes the standard composition ranges of commercial products and explains how various alloying elements affect mechanical properties, processing, and performance. The article also discusses special grades of manganese steels and the types of applications for which they have been developed.

The qualities that make superalloys excellent engineering materials also make them difficult to machine. This chapter discusses the challenges involved in machining superalloys and the factors that determine machinability. It addresses material removal rates, cutting tool materials, tool life, and practical issues such as set up time, tool changes, and production scheduling. It describes several machining processes, including turning, boring, planing, trepanning, shaping, broaching, drilling, tapping, thread milling, and grinding. It also provides information on toolholders, fixturing, cutting and grinding fluids, and tooling modifications.

This chapter concerns itself with the tribology of ceramics, cermets, and cemented carbides. It begins by describing the composition and friction and wear behaviors of aluminum oxide, silicon carbide, silicon nitride, and zirconia. It then compares and contrasts the microstructure, properties, and relative merits of cermets with those of cemented carbides.

This chapter describes the processes involved in the fabrication of wrought and cast metal products. It discusses deformation processes including bending and forming, material removal processes such as milling, cutting, and grinding, and joining methods including welding, soldering, and brazing. It also discusses powder consolidation, rolling, drawing and extrusion, and common forging methods.

This chapter addresses the issue of die failures in hot and cold forging operations. It describes failure classifications, fatigue fracture and wear mechanisms, analytical wear models, and the various factors that limit die life. It also includes several case studies in which finite-element modeling is used to predict die failure and extend die life.

Distortion is defined as an irreversible and usually unpredictable dimensional change in a component due to thermal processing or temperature variations and loading in service. This chapter describes two types of distortion: size distortion and shape distortion. It addresses how distortion can be managed by controlling certain factors. The chapter discusses the cause and effect of distortion during nitriding, the processes involved in stock removal prior to nitriding, and the criteria for post-machining operations.

Beryllium’s machining characteristics are similar to those of heat-treated cast aluminum and chilled cast iron. Like the other materials, it can be turned, milled, drilled, bored, sawed, cut, threaded, tapped, and trepanned with good results. This chapter explains how these machining operations are conducted and describes the effect of tooling materials, cutting speeds, metal-removal rates, and other variables. It also explains how to assess and remove surface damage caused by machining such as microcracks and twins.

This chapter discusses the processes and procedures involved in tribotesting, the significance of test parameters and conditions, and practical considerations including test metrics and measurements and the interpretation of wear damage. It also describes the different types of erosion tests in use and common approaches for adhesive wear and abrasion testing.

This chapter covers common types of erosion, including droplet, slurry, cavitation, liquid impingement, gas flow, and solid particle erosion, and major types of wear, including abrasive, adhesive, lubricated, rolling, and impact wear. It also covers special cases such as galling, fretting, scuffing, and spalling and introduces the concepts of tribocorrosion and biotribology.

This chapter instructs the metallographer on the basic skills required to prepare a polished metallographic specimen. It is organized in a chronological sequence starting with the information-gathering process on the material being investigated, then moving on to sectioning, mounting, grinding, and polishing processes, and ending with methods used to properly store metallographic specimens. The discussion covers the preparation procedures, the materials being investigated, and equipment used to perform these procedures.

This chapter discusses bulk deformation processes and how they are used to reshape metals and refine solidification structures. It begins by describing the differences between hot and cold working along with their respective advantages. It then discusses various forging methods, including open-die and closed-die forging, hot upset and roll forging, high-energy-rate forging, ring rolling, rotary swaging, radial and orbital forging, isothermal and hot-die forging, precision forging, and cold forging. The chapter also includes information on cold and hot extrusion and drawing operations.

This article presents best practices for the metallographic preparation of specimens produced via thermal spray coating methods. It outlines typical metallographic preparation process flow, highlighting important considerations for obtaining a clear and representative specimen suitable for characterization via examination techniques, such as optical or electron microscopy. The process flow includes preliminary resin infiltration, sectioning, mounting, grinding, and polishing. To aid in the identification and resolution of common issues during subsequent specimen analysis, the article presents common issues, along with causes and mitigation strategies. It describes the processes involved in the interpretation of the thermal spray coating microstructure.