There's only so many ways things are formed into different shapes and states. Whenever you see something in any shape, try to find out the forming mechanism!
- Cast into Mold, like molten tin being poured into a mold reverse-shaped like a model airplane.
- Extruded, like when semi-molten aluminum is pressed into a plate with a small V-shaped opening and hence comes out the other side in a V-shape.
- Air-blown, like semi-molten glass being rotated and blown into a vase-shape.
- Hydroformed, like a round aluminum tube being pressed by hydraulic fluid at super-high pressure into a solid mold reverse-shaped like the frame of a bicycle.
- Pressed, like a heated steel block being high-pressure pressed by solid metal into a mold.
- Magnaformed, like a plate of iron being twisted into an irregular shape by powerful electromagnets.
- Punching, like a vertical round bar pressing down an aluminum plate at high-pressure while underneath the plate is a strong steel support with a hole in the middle slightly larger diameter than the vertical round bar.
- Struck, like a hammer pounding an edge into hot steel for a sword or a chisel whittling away pieces of wood for a sculpture.
- Ground, like an abrasive wheel rotating quickly against an iron block to whittle iron particles away towards the block's precise dimensions.
- Solid-sharp-cutting, like a knife cutting a tomato in half, or an endmill finishing the top surface of an aluminum plate, a flycutter roughly removing lots of iron from a block, a bandsaw/circular-saw cutting lumber in half, boring bar enlargening the inner diameter of a steel tube.
- Plasma cutting, when a stream of high-speed ionized air with high current blows and melts through a conductive material.
- Waterjet cutting, when a mixture of water and an abrasive are sent into a high pressure stream to abrasive-cut a material.
- Brushing, like when stainless steel brush is high-speed rotated to clean the surface of a steel table.
- Sandblasting, when a blanket of abrasive is high-pressure shot towards a material to finish its surface.
- Lasercutting, when a high-intensity light beam precisely melts/burns/vaporizes a material.
- Flamecutting, like when oxygen and acetylene are burned for a hot flame to melt/cut steel easily with the help of the exothermic reaction.
- Chemical Reaction, like when a copper clad board is immersed in acid and the acid removes all of the copper that is not protected by a resin coating.