“Man, I can’t get over that new Mac Pro. And while we all know the ‘thermal core’ part is made from extruded aluminum, how is the exterior (which is also aluminum) made?” Rain Noe asks for Core77.
“It’s obviously not extruded, as it’s got that inward-curving lip up top, and it wouldn’t make sense from an efficiency standpoint to CNC-mill the entire thing out of a billet; there would be too much waste,” Noe reports. “According to Don Lehman, it’s made using the production method known as impact extrusion. Conceptually, the process is more similar to blowmolding than proper extrusion, except a metal punch takes the place of compressed air, and the material used is metal rather than plastic.”
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Noe reports, “Here’s a quick look at impact extrusion…”
Read more, and see more videos, in the full article here.
[Attribution: Cult of Mac. Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
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