Manufacturing – A brief overview

Manufacturing, being the need of generation, has made its way into each and every person’s day to day life. It is the way of transforming an idea into consumer usable product. Every single product we use is manufactured by one way or other. Each and every material thing in existence has to go through manufacturing processes over its lifetime. The food we eat, the audio player we listen, the LCDs we watch, the automobiles we drive, books we read...Well, the list is endless....Every single thing we see around is the result of manufacturing.

For years, manufacturing has been an essential part of man's evolution and this process already had brought revolutions in different regions of the world at different times. Be it the invention of spinning jenny or assembly line production methodology or the way metal fabrication takes place. Manufacturing is so interesting and productive that no one can deny the fact that it’s the most common form of human intelligence and growth. Every day manufacturing takes place at various places so that the needs of industry get fulfilled periodically. Let’s take a general view of it...

Manufacturing a product requires designing i.e., introducing the idea into physical world from mind, engineering i.e., specifying properties and dimensions of product, producing i.e., creating final products suitable for use and servicing i.e., maintaining the product so that it remains in working order.

Broadly, Manufacturing consists of three stages.

First stage

Locating and extracting materials from raw sources forms the first stage.

Second stage

The second stage involves removing material from sources to transport them to processing plants. The second stage, also know as primary processing changes the raw resources into industry standard resources used for final production and stock them for future use. Creating steel from Iron ore, producing flour by grinding grains, creating glass from silica are some activities of second stage of manufacturing. Outcome of the second stage has no value to end user but to the manufacturers, they are very much valuable.

Third stage

The third/last stage, called as secondary processing, involves processing industrial material into consumer goods by changing size and shape by means of molding, finishing and assembling. It requires constant human presence and takes place in factories, small or big depending upon the size of production.

Secondary processing consists of six processes:

These are:

• Casting and molding:

This process produces parts into required shapes and sizes. The material, if not in liquid state, is liquefied by heating and introduced into mold either by pouring or injecting with force into cavity. The material is then allowed to cool or forced to cool by cooling, drying or through any other chemical reactions. Finally, the casting product is taken out by precisely opening or safely destroying the mold.

• Forming:
  

Forming force and forming devices are essential parts of forming processes. Forming force is applied using press, rolling machines or by hammer whereas a mold having external shape, a die with shaved cavity forms forming devices. The main significance of this process is that it changes the shape and size but retains the volume of material by forcing the material over, into, or between a forming device and it can be done both ways, hot and cold as required.

• Separating:
  

This process removes unwanted, excess material to size and shape the product by implementing machining or shearing. During machining, excess material is removed in chip form or in molten glob form when flame cutting is applied. Shearing involves fracturing the unwanted material from the product part. Cutting elements like burning gases, tools, electric sparks, etc. are used. In modern times, methods like CNC machining, Laser cutting are used for faster and accurate work-flow.

• Conditioning:

To meet the longevity, durability and robust characteristics of the material, certain properties of the material like hardness, strength, corrosion resistance are changed by altering its internal structure with the help of heat, mechanical forces or chemical actions. Firing ceramics, tempering glass and heat treating metals are few examples of conditioning processes.

• Assembling:
  

As the name suggests, assembling involves joining various parts together, either permanently or temporarily, to form a complete product. Normally adhesion, fusion, fasteners or joints are used to create assembly but heavy industrial processes like brazing, welding, soldering, riveting, seaming, bolting and gluing also used when required.

• Finishing:

After completely assembling the product, the next phase is to make it look attractive and acceptable to general use. Finishing process does this task of coating or converting the material surface to protect and beautify. It involves finishing agents like paints, varnishes for coatings which are organic and metallic, ceramic coatings are inorganic. These coatings are applied using brushing, spraying, electroplating, dipping, roll-coating, flooding etc...

After these three stages, the final product comes out of the manufacturing plant and is ready for destined purpose...

As per one’s belief, manufacturing involves lots of heavy engineering equipments, huge amount of manpower, more rigid and complex processes and countless working hours. But, over the years, this has taken a giant leap and moved forward along with globalization. Manufacturing is no more a tiresome process. With use of CNC machining and Laser cutting technologies for metal fabrication, this industry has gone through many changes, which were revolutionary and were accepted globally.

Thank you for reading...

Happy Manufacturing...