The metal processing technology mainly includes five categories: casting, plastic processing, cutting, welding, and powder metallurgy. ‌‌These technologies are widely used in prototyping industries.

Casting: Pouring molten metal into a mold and cooling it to solidify into a casting with a certain shape. Casting can be divided into sand casting and special casting, with commonly used materials including cast steel, cast iron, cast copper, and cast aluminum.

Plastic processing: also known as metal pressure processing, which causes plastic deformation of metal billets through external forces to obtain billets or parts with certain shapes, sizes, and mechanical properties. Plastic processing includes methods such as forging, rolling, extrusion, drawing, and stamping.

Cutting: Using cutting tools to cut off excess machining of metal workpieces on a machine tool to achieve the specified shape, size, and surface quality. Cutting processing includes turning, milling, planning, grinding, drilling, boring, and fitting. But according to today’s level of technology, what we usually discuss is CNC machining, CNC milling, NC turning etc.

Welding: Utilizing the characteristic of metals being easily melted at high temperatures to connect metals to each other. Welding is divided into three categories: fusion welding, pressure welding, and fiber welding.

Powder metallurgy: Materials or products with the desired shape and properties are obtained by mixing, forming, and sintering metal powders or metal compounds as raw materials. Common metal powders include iron, copper, nickel, platinum, tungsten, aluminum, etc.

In addition, metal processing also includes processes such as heat treatment and surface treatment. Heat treatment changes the internal and surface structure of metals through heating and cooling to achieve desired properties. Surface treatment is used to protect and decorate metal surfaces, including mechanical treatment, chemical treatment, and electrochemical treatment.

These processes have a wide range of applications in industrial production, from large parts such as bridges and ships to fine components such as engines and jewelry, and metal processing technology plays an important role. With the development of industrial intelligence, metal processing technology is constantly upgrading to improve production efficiency and reduce costs.

The prototype manufacturing process at Metalstar Prototype covers all these processing techniques. We strive to use corresponding mass production manufacturing processes to make your prototype parts, this way is for ensuring that the prototype parts we produced meet the corresponding design verification requirements.

Learn more about Metalstar Prototype’s capacities and capabilities, please visit our website at www.metalstarprototype.com. Thanks for reading.