Engineering components can be manufactured from a wide variety of materials from plastics to ceramics to even woods. Despite the developments in materials and improvements in their properties and capabilities, the vast majority of components are still made from metals and a large proportion of these are still made from Steels. This is because Steel is relatively very cheap, has highly advantageous mechanical and physical properties and can have those properties enhanced and altered by processes of heat-treatment. Steel is highly effective at what it does and is very versatile due to the fact that a wide variety of Steels and Alloy Steels are available, resulting from varying the amount of Carbon content and alloying elements.

 

This applications work will investigate and explore aspects of the use of Plain Carbon Steels, machining and CAE applications and the use of simple heat treatment processes.

 

The vehicle of exploration is to be the design and manufacture of a simple workshop item such as Punches.