The metalworking industry is being profoundly and deeply altered by the appearance and integration of new materials—innovative materials that are now taking their place in the value chain in metalworking. These materials exert an unmistakable influence over metalworking practices, applications, and, in a tangible way, the industry’s future. The metalworking materials universe seems, on the face of it, a stroked canvas of enormous potential. That impression is from the payoff at the end of the story. In the telling of it, there is a look back over the metalworking industry—a history replete with materials innovation and advancement.
Alloy innovation is driving the metalworking industry forward, and the high-performance kind are among the most valuable game-changers. They go into the right stuff—mostly for the right reasons—so they better fulfill the unusual demands of critical applications, like the making of military and civilian aircraft or space vehicles. The more we go into the next generation of these alloys, the more they show improvements in mechanical properties, resistance to corrosion, and thermal stability—turning some of our longtime ideas in metallurgy upside down and setting new standards for reliability and performance in highly demanding sectors.
Nanotechnology has created amazing opportunities in metalworking. It is a new field with a nearly unfathomable potential for change. Nanomaterials offer remarkable characteristics and new dimensionality, power, and precision in metalworking. This combination creates new opportunities in metalworking, where those doing the work can alter the traditional boundaries of metal component definition, from how well a component conducts electricity to its strength and thermal behavior and, ultimately, its size and weight. Additive manufacturing is also part of this revolution. Its techniques, allied with innovative metalworking materials, are now yielding new forms and functions in metal components—from prototyping cases to adding enough energy to enable small high-performance motors and generators.
Eco-friendly materials reset the metalworking world, where sustainability steadily evolves. Today, recycled metals, bio-based polymers, and coatings with a reduced environmental impact are in use. Tomorrow, innovative smart materials integrated with the Industrial Internet of Things, and bio-inspired materials, may lead metalworking to perform even more efficiently and minimize its environmental footprint. "Eco-friendly" may become insufficient. The next generation of materials promises a convergence of use, efficiency, and reduce-impact performance that, with a little luck, may shift metalworking toward truly responsible practices. "Tomorrow's industrial processes and products should perform as well, or better, than today's processes and products, with fewer materials and energy, and less environmental and human health impact," says materials scientist William A. Smith.
To conclude, the groundbreaking development of new materials can be viewed as one of the driving forces behind the metalworking industry's evolution—along with the machine tools and methods of machining. When you consider metallurgy in a comprehensive way, new materials continue to enhance not just the performance of metalworking components and systems, but also their light-weighting and sustainable capabilities. And it's not merely a future that we can see with our eyes; it's happening now.