Chapter 8
Fabricating Odds and Ends
IN THIS CHAPTER
Ironing it out
Spinning isn’t a sweaty exercise
Hearing explosions and bending pipe
Buckling in
Forging fury
Imagination decides everything.
— BLAISE PASCAL
Laser cutters. Press brakes. Stampers and punch presses. Walk into any fabricating shop anywhere and these are the machine tools you’re most likely to see and hear. Together with welding (I discuss it in Chapter 10), they are the primary manufacturing technologies responsible for bending and cutting and forming most every piece of sheet metal you’ll encounter in every fabricator’s life.
I provide a 30,000-foot view of each in Chapters 4–7, and I hope that is enough to at least pique your interest in all the cool things these machines can do. Yet manufacturing is such a broad topic, and all the shapes fabricators are called upon to produce so extensive, that a handful of additional processes deserve honorable mention.
That said, this chapter serves to “fill up the corners,” so ...
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