1.
Iron
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Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series and it is by mass the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earths outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earths crust, like the other group 8 elements, ruthenium and osmium, iron exists in a wide range of oxidation states, −2 to +6, although +2 and +3 are the most common. Elemental iron occurs in meteoroids and other low oxygen environments, but is reactive to oxygen, fresh iron surfaces appear lustrous silvery-gray, but oxidize in normal air to give hydrated iron oxides, commonly known as rust. Unlike the metals that form passivating oxide layers, iron oxides occupy more volume than the metal and thus flake off, Iron metal has been used since ancient times, although copper alloys, which have lower melting temperatures, were used even earlier in human history. Pure iron is soft, but is unobtainable by smelting because it is significantly hardened and strengthened by impurities, in particular carbon. A certain proportion of carbon steel, which may be up to 1000 times harder than pure iron. Crude iron metal is produced in blast furnaces, where ore is reduced by coke to pig iron, further refinement with oxygen reduces the carbon content to the correct proportion to make steel. Steels and iron alloys formed with metals are by far the most common industrial metals because they have a great range of desirable properties. Iron chemical compounds have many uses, Iron oxide mixed with aluminium powder can be ignited to create a thermite reaction, used in welding and purifying ores. Iron forms binary compounds with the halogens and the chalcogens, among its organometallic compounds is ferrocene, the first sandwich compound discovered. Iron plays an important role in biology, forming complexes with oxygen in hemoglobin and myoglobin. Iron is also the metal at the site of many important redox enzymes dealing with cellular respiration and oxidation and reduction in plants. A human male of average height has about 4 grams of iron in his body and this iron is distributed throughout the body in hemoglobin, tissues, muscles, bone marrow, blood proteins, enzymes, ferritin, hemosiderin, and transport in plasma. The mechanical properties of iron and its alloys can be evaluated using a variety of tests, including the Brinell test, Rockwell test, the data on iron is so consistent that it is often used to calibrate measurements or to compare tests. An increase in the content will cause a significant increase in the hardness. Maximum hardness of 65 Rc is achieved with a 0. 6% carbon content, because of the softness of iron, it is much easier to work with than its heavier congeners ruthenium and osmium. Because of its significance for planetary cores, the properties of iron at high pressures and temperatures have also been studied extensively
2.
Alloy
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An alloy is a mixture of metals or a mixture of a metal and another element. Alloys are defined by a metallic bonding character, an alloy may be a solid solution of metal elements or a mixture of metallic phases. Intermetallic compounds are alloys with a stoichiometry and crystal structure. Zintl phases are sometimes considered alloys depending on bond types. Alloys are used in a variety of applications. In some cases, a combination of metals may reduce the overall cost of the material while preserving important properties, in other cases, the combination of metals imparts synergistic properties to the constituent metal elements such as corrosion resistance or mechanical strength. Examples of alloys are steel, solder, brass, pewter, duralumin, bronze, the alloy constituents are usually measured by mass. Alloys are usually classified as substitutional or interstitial alloys, depending on the arrangement that forms the alloy. They can be classified as homogeneous, or heterogeneous or intermetallic. An alloy is a mixture of elements, which forms an impure substance that retains the characteristics of a metal. Alloys are made by mixing two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal and this is usually called the primary metal or the base metal, and the name of this metal may also be the name of the alloy. The other constituents may or may not be metals but, when mixed with the base, they will be soluble. The mechanical properties of alloys will often be different from those of its individual constituents. A metal that is very soft, such as aluminium, can be altered by alloying it with another soft metal. Although both metals are soft and ductile, the resulting aluminium alloy will have much greater strength. Adding a small amount of carbon to iron trades its great ductility for the greater strength of an alloy called steel. Due to its strength, but still substantial toughness, and its ability to be greatly altered by heat treatment, steel is one of the most useful. By adding chromium to steel, its resistance to corrosion can be enhanced, creating stainless steel, while adding silicon will alter its electrical characteristics, producing silicon steel
3.
Aluminium
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Aluminium or aluminum is a chemical element in the boron group with symbol Al and atomic number 13. It is a silvery-white, soft, nonmagnetic, ductile metal, Aluminium metal is so chemically reactive that native specimens are rare and limited to extreme reducing environments. Instead, it is combined in over 270 different minerals. The chief ore of aluminium is bauxite, Aluminium is remarkable for the metals low density and its ability to resist corrosion through the phenomenon of passivation. Aluminium and its alloys are vital to the industry and important in transportation and structures, such as building facades. The oxides and sulfates are the most useful compounds of aluminium, despite its prevalence in the environment, no known form of life uses aluminium salts metabolically, but aluminium is well tolerated by plants and animals. Because of these salts abundance, the potential for a role for them is of continuing interest. Aluminium is a soft, durable, lightweight, ductile. It is nonmagnetic and does not easily ignite, a fresh film of aluminium serves as a good reflector of visible light and an excellent reflector of medium and far infrared radiation. The yield strength of aluminium is 7–11 MPa, while aluminium alloys have yield strengths ranging from 200 MPa to 600 MPa. Aluminium has about one-third the density and stiffness of steel and it is easily machined, cast, drawn and extruded. Aluminium atoms are arranged in a cubic structure. Aluminium has an energy of approximately 200 mJ/m2. Aluminium is a thermal and electrical conductor, having 59% the conductivity of copper. Aluminium is capable of superconductivity, with a critical temperature of 1.2 kelvin. Aluminium is the most common material for the fabrication of superconducting qubits, the strongest aluminium alloys are less corrosion resistant due to galvanic reactions with alloyed copper. This corrosion resistance is reduced by aqueous salts, particularly in the presence of dissimilar metals. In highly acidic solutions, aluminium reacts with water to form hydrogen, primarily because it is corroded by dissolved chlorides, such as common sodium chloride, household plumbing is never made from aluminium
4.
Cobalt
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Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. Like nickel, cobalt is found in the Earths crust only in chemically combined form, the free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal. In 1735, such ores were found to be reducible to a new metal, today, some cobalt is produced specifically from various metallic-lustered ores, for example cobaltite, but the main source of the element is as a by-product of copper and nickel mining. The copper belt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, cobalt is primarily used in the preparation of magnetic, wear-resistant and high-strength alloys. The compounds, cobalt silicate and cobalt aluminate give a deep blue color to glass, ceramics, inks, paints. Cobalt occurs naturally as only one isotope, cobalt-59. Cobalt-60 is an important radioisotope, used as a radioactive tracer. Cobalt is the center of coenzymes called cobalamins, the most common example of which is vitamin B12. As such, it is a trace dietary mineral for all animals. Cobalt in inorganic form is also a micronutrient for bacteria, algae, cobalt is a ferromagnetic metal with a specific gravity of 8.9. The Curie temperature is 1,115 °C and the moment is 1. 6–1.7 Bohr magnetons per atom. Cobalt has a relative permeability two-thirds that of iron, metallic cobalt occurs as two crystallographic structures, hcp and fcc. The ideal transition temperature between the hcp and fcc structures is 450 °C, but in practice, the difference is so small that random intergrowth of the two is common. Cobalt is a weakly reducing metal that is protected from oxidation by an oxide film. It is attacked by halogens and sulfur, heating in oxygen produces Co3O4 which loses oxygen at 900 °C to give the monoxide CoO. The metal reacts with fluorine at 520 K to give CoF3, with chlorine, bromine and iodine and it does not react with hydrogen gas or nitrogen gas even when heated, but it does react with boron, carbon, phosphorus, arsenic and sulfur. At ordinary temperatures, it reacts slowly with mineral acids, and very slowly with moist, common oxidation states of cobalt include +2 and +3, although compounds with oxidation states ranging from −3 to +5 are also known. A common oxidation state for simple compounds is +2 and these salts form the pink-colored metal aquo complex 2+ in water
5.
Copper
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Copper is a chemical element with symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of copper has a reddish-orange color. Copper is one of the few metals that occur in nature in directly usable metallic form as opposed to needing extraction from an ore and this led to very early human use, from c.8000 BC. Copper used in buildings, usually for roofing, oxidizes to form a green verdigris, Copper is sometimes used in decorative art, both in its elemental metal form and in compounds as pigments. Copper compounds are used as agents, fungicides, and wood preservatives. Copper is essential to all living organisms as a trace dietary mineral because it is a key constituent of the enzyme complex cytochrome c oxidase. In molluscs and crustaceans, copper is a constituent of the blood pigment hemocyanin, replaced by the hemoglobin in fish. In humans, copper is found mainly in the liver, muscle, the adult body contains between 1.4 and 2.1 mg of copper per kilogram of body weight. The filled d-shells in these elements contribute little to interatomic interactions, unlike metals with incomplete d-shells, metallic bonds in copper are lacking a covalent character and are relatively weak. This observation explains the low hardness and high ductility of single crystals of copper, at the macroscopic scale, introduction of extended defects to the crystal lattice, such as grain boundaries, hinders flow of the material under applied stress, thereby increasing its hardness. For this reason, copper is supplied in a fine-grained polycrystalline form. The softness of copper partly explains its high conductivity and high thermal conductivity. The maximum permissible current density of copper in open air is approximately 3. 1×106 A/m2 of cross-sectional area, Copper is one of a few metallic elements with a natural color other than gray or silver. Pure copper is orange-red and acquires a reddish tarnish when exposed to air, as with other metals, if copper is put in contact with another metal, galvanic corrosion will occur. A green layer of verdigris can often be seen on old structures, such as the roofing of many older buildings. Copper tarnishes when exposed to sulfur compounds, with which it reacts to form various copper sulfides. There are 29 isotopes of copper, 63Cu and 65Cu are stable, with 63Cu comprising approximately 69% of naturally occurring copper, both have a spin of 3⁄2
6.
Titanium
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Titanium is a chemical element with symbol Ti and atomic number 22. It is a transition metal with a silver color, low density. Titanium is resistant to corrosion in sea water, aqua regia, titanium was discovered in Cornwall, Great Britain, by William Gregor in 1791, and it is named by Martin Heinrich Klaproth for the Titans of Greek mythology. The metal is extracted from its principal mineral ores by the Kroll, the most common compound, titanium dioxide, is a popular photocatalyst and is used in the manufacture of white pigments. Other compounds include titanium tetrachloride, a component of smoke screens and catalysts, and titanium trichloride, the two most useful properties of the metal are corrosion resistance and strength-to-density ratio, the highest of any metallic element. In its unalloyed condition, titanium is as strong as some steels, there are two allotropic forms and five naturally occurring isotopes of this element, 46Ti through 50Ti, with 48Ti being the most abundant. Although they have the number of valence electrons and are in the same group in the periodic table. As a metal, titanium is recognized for its high strength-to-weight ratio and it is a strong metal with low density that is quite ductile, lustrous, and metallic-white in color. The relatively high melting point makes it useful as a refractory metal and it is paramagnetic and has fairly low electrical and thermal conductivity. Commercial grades of titanium have ultimate tensile strength of about 434 MPa, equal to that of common, low-grade steel alloys, titanium is 60% denser than aluminium, but more than twice as strong as the most commonly used 6061-T6 aluminium alloy. Certain titanium alloys achieve tensile strengths of over 1400 MPa, however, titanium loses strength when heated above 430 °C. Titanium is not as hard as some grades of heat-treated steel, it is non-magnetic, machining requires precautions, because the material might gall unless sharp tools and proper cooling methods are used. Like steel structures, those made from titanium have a limit that guarantees longevity in some applications. The metal is an allotrope of an hexagonal α form that changes into a body-centered cubic β form at 882 °C. The specific heat of the α form increases dramatically as it is heated to this transition temperature but then falls, similar to zirconium and hafnium, an additional omega phase exists, which is thermodynamically stable at high pressures, but metastable at ambient pressures. This phase is usually hexagonal or trigonal and can be considered to be due to a soft longitudinal acoustic phonon of the β phase causing collapse of planes of atoms, like aluminium and magnesium, titanium metal and its alloys oxidize immediately upon exposure to air. Titanium readily reacts with oxygen at 1,200 °C in air and it is, however, slow to react with water and air at ambient temperatures because it forms a passive oxide coating that protects the bulk metal from further oxidation. When it first forms, this layer is only 1–2 nm thick but continues to grow slowly
7.
Magnet
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A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet, a force that pulls on other materials, such as iron. A permanent magnet is a made from a material that is magnetized. An everyday example is a refrigerator used to hold notes on a refrigerator door. Materials that can be magnetized, which are also the ones that are attracted to a magnet, are called ferromagnetic. These include iron, nickel, cobalt, some alloys of rare-earth metals, ferromagnetic materials can be divided into magnetically soft materials like annealed iron, which can be magnetized but do not tend to stay magnetized, and magnetically hard materials, which do. To demagnetize a saturated magnet, a magnetic field must be applied. Hard materials have high coercivity, whereas soft materials have low coercivity, an electromagnet is made from a coil of wire that acts as a magnet when an electric current passes through it but stops being a magnet when the current stops. Often, the coil is wrapped around a core of soft material such as steel. The overall strength of a magnet is measured by its magnetic moment or, alternatively, the local strength of magnetism in a material is measured by its magnetization. Ancient people learned about magnetism from lodestones, which are naturally magnetized pieces of iron ore, the word magnet in Greek meant stone from Magnesia, a part of ancient Greece where lodestones were found. Lodestones, suspended so they could turn, were the first magnetic compasses, the earliest known surviving descriptions of magnets and their properties are from Greece, India, and China around 2500 years ago. The properties of lodestones and their affinity for iron were written of by Pliny the Elder in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia, by the 12th to 13th centuries AD, magnetic compasses were used in navigation in China, Europe, the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere. The magnetic flux density is a vector field, the magnetic B field vector at a given point in space is specified by two properties, Its direction, which is along the orientation of a compass needle. Its magnitude, which is proportional to how strongly the compass needle orients along that direction, in SI units, the strength of the magnetic B field is given in teslas. A magnets magnetic moment is a vector that characterizes the overall magnetic properties. For a bar magnet, the direction of the moment points from the magnets south pole to its north pole. In SI units, the moment is specified in terms of A·m2
8.
Rare-earth magnet
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Rare-earth magnets are strong permanent magnets made from alloys of rare earth elements. The magnetic field produced by rare-earth magnets can exceed 1.4 teslas, whereas ferrite or ceramic magnets typically exhibit fields of 0.5 to 1 tesla. There are two types, neodymium magnets and samarium-cobalt magnets, magnetostrictive rare-earth magnets such as Terfenol-D also have applications—e. g. in loudspeakers. Rare earth magnets are brittle and also vulnerable to corrosion, so they are usually plated or coated to protect them from breaking, chipping. The term rare earth can be misleading as these metals are not particularly rare or precious, however, they form compounds with the transition metals such as iron, nickel, and cobalt, and some of these have Curie temperatures well above room temperature. Rare earth magnets are made from these compounds, the greater strength of rare earth magnets is mostly due to two factors. First, their structures have very high magnetic anisotropy. This means a crystal of the material preferentially magnetizes along a specific crystal axis but is difficult to magnetize in other directions. The resistance of the lattice to turning its direction of magnetization gives these compounds a very high magnetic coercivity. This is a consequence of incomplete filling of the f-shell, which can contain up to 7 unpaired electrons, in a magnet it is the unpaired electrons, aligned so they spin in the same direction, which generate the magnetic field. This gives the materials high remanence, the maximum energy density BHmax is proportional to Js2 so these materials have the potential for storing large amounts of magnetic energy. The magnetic energy product BHmax of neodymium magnets is about 18 times greater than ordinary magnets by volume and this allows rare earth magnets to be smaller than other magnets which produce the same field strength. Rare earth magnets have higher remanence, much higher coercivity and energy product, the table below compares the magnetic performance of the two types of rare earth magnet, neodymium and samarium-cobalt, with other types of permanent magnets. Source, Samarium–cobalt magnets, the first family of rare earth magnets invented, are used than neodymium magnets because of their higher cost. However, samarium–cobalt has a higher Curie temperature, creating a niche for these magnets in applications where high strength is needed at high operating temperatures. They are highly resistant to oxidation, but sintered samarium-cobalt magnets are brittle and prone to chipping and cracking, neodymium magnets, invented in the 1980s, are the strongest and most affordable type of rare-earth magnet. They are made of an alloy of neodymium, iron, and boron, neodymium magnets are used in numerous applications requiring strong, compact permanent magnets, such as electric motors for cordless tools, hard disk drives, magnetic holddowns, and jewelry clasps. They have the highest magnetic field strength and have a higher coercivity, corrosion can cause unprotected magnets to spall off a surface layer, or to crumble into a powder
9.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
10.
Cavity magnetron
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The cavity magnetron is a high-powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field while moving past a series of open metal cavities. Electrons pass by the openings to these cavities and cause radio waves to oscillate within, the frequency of the microwaves produced, the resonant frequency, is determined by the cavities physical dimensions. An early form of magnetron was invented by H. Gerdien in 1910, another form of magnetron tube, the split-anode magnetron, was invented by Albert Hull in 1920, but it wasnt capable of high frequencies and was of little use. Similar devices were experimented with by many teams through the 1920s and 1930s, the cavity magnetron tube was later improved by John Randall and Harry Boot in 1940 at the University of Birmingham, England. The compact cavity magnetron tube drastically reduced the size of radar sets so that they could be easily installed in night-fighter aircraft, anti-submarine aircraft. In the post-war era the magnetron became less used in the radar role. This was because the output changes from pulse to pulse. This makes the signal unsuitable for pulse-to-pulse comparisons, which is used for detecting and removing clutter from the radar display. The magnetron remains in use in some radars, but has much more common as a low-cost microwave source for microwave ovens. In this form, approximately one billion magnetrons are in use today, in a conventional electron tube, electrons are emitted from a negatively charged, heated component called the cathode and are attracted to a positively charged component called the anode. The idea of using a grid for control was patented by Lee de Forest, one concept used a magnetic field instead of an electrical charge to control current flow, leading to the development of the magnetron tube. In this design, the tube was made with two electrodes, typically with the cathode in the form of a rod in the center. The tube was placed between the poles of a horseshoe magnet arranged such that the field was aligned parallel to the axis of the electrodes. With no magnetic field present, the tube operates as a diode, in the presence of the magnetic field, the electrons will experience a force at right angles to their direction of motion, according to the left-hand rule. In this case, the electrons follow a path between the cathode and anode. The curvature of the path can be controlled by varying either the field, using an electromagnet. At very high magnetic field settings the electrons are forced back onto the cathode, at the opposite extreme, with no field, the electrons are free to flow straight from the cathode to the anode. There is a point between the two extremes, the value or Hull cut-off magnetic field, where the electrons just reach the anode
11.
Loudspeaker
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A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer, which converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. The most widely used type of speaker in the 2010s is the speaker, invented in 1925 by Edward W. Kellogg. The dynamic speaker operates on the basic principle as a dynamic microphone. Besides this most common method, there are several technologies that can be used to convert an electrical signal into sound. The sound source must be amplified or strengthened with a power amplifier before the signal is sent to the speaker. Speakers are typically housed in an enclosure or speaker cabinet which is often a rectangular or square box made of wood or sometimes plastic. The enclosures materials and design play an important role in the quality of the sound, where high fidelity reproduction of sound is required, multiple loudspeaker transducers are often mounted in the same enclosure, each reproducing a part of the audible frequency range. In this case the individual speakers are referred to as drivers, drivers made for reproducing high audio frequencies are called tweeters, those for middle frequencies are called mid-range drivers, and those for low frequencies are called woofers. Smaller loudspeakers are found in such as radios, televisions, portable audio players, computers. Larger loudspeaker systems are used for music, sound reinforcement in theatres and concerts, the term loudspeaker may refer to individual transducers or to complete speaker systems consisting of an enclosure including one or more drivers. To adequately reproduce a range of frequencies with even coverage, most loudspeaker systems employ more than one driver. Individual drivers are used to different frequency ranges. The drivers are named subwoofers, woofers, mid-range speakers, tweeters, the terms for different speaker drivers differ, depending on the application. In two-way systems there is no mid-range driver, so the task of reproducing the mid-range sounds falls upon the woofer and tweeter, home stereos use the designation tweeter for the high frequency driver, while professional concert systems may designate them as HF or highs. When multiple drivers are used in a system, a network, called a crossover. Loudspeaker driver of the type pictured are termed dynamic to distinguish them from earlier drivers, or speakers using piezoelectric or electrostatic systems, or any of several other sorts. Johann Philipp Reis installed an electric loudspeaker in his telephone in 1861, it was capable of reproducing clear tones, alexander Graham Bell patented his first electric loudspeaker as part of his telephone in 1876, which was followed in 1877 by an improved version from Ernst Siemens. In 1898, Horace Short patented a design for a loudspeaker driven by compressed air, he sold the rights to Charles Parsons
12.
Casting (metalworking)
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In metalworking, casting means a process, in which liquid metal is poured into a mold, that contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and is then allowed to cool and solidify. The solidified part is known as a casting, which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting is most often used for making complex shapes that would be difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods, Casting processes have been known for thousands of years, and widely used for sculpture, especially in bronze, jewellery in precious metals, and weapons and tools. Traditional techniques include casting, plaster mold casting and sand casting. The modern casting process is subdivided into two categories, expendable and non-expendable casting. It is further broken down by the material, such as sand or metal. Expendable mold casting is a classification that includes sand, plastic, shell, plaster. This method of mold casting involves the use of temporary, non-reusable molds, sand casting is one of the most popular and simplest types of casting, and has been used for centuries. Sand casting allows for smaller batches than permanent mold casting and at a reasonable cost. Not only does this method allow manufacturers to create products at a low cost, from castings that fit in the palm of your hand to train beds, it can all be done with sand casting. Sand casting also allows most metals to be cast depending on the type of sand used for the molds, sand casting requires a lead time of days, or even weeks sometimes, for production at high output rates and is unsurpassed for large-part production. Green sand has almost no weight limit, whereas dry sand has a practical part mass limit of 2. Minimum part weight ranges from 0. 075–0.1 kg, the sand is bonded together using clays, chemical binders, or polymerized oils. Sand can be recycled many times in most operations and requires little maintenance, plaster casting is similar to sand casting except that plaster of paris is substituted for sand as a mold material. Plaster casting is an alternative to other molding processes for complex parts due to the low cost of the plaster. The biggest disadvantage is that it can only be used with low melting point non-ferrous materials, such as aluminium, copper, magnesium, and zinc. Shell molding is similar to casting, but the molding cavity is formed by a hardened shell of sand instead of a flask filled with sand. The sand used is finer than sand casting sand and is mixed with a resin so that it can be heated by the pattern, because of the resin and finer sand, it gives a much finer surface finish
