Fencing Masks
Books
Ocean Drone Transformers
3D Puzzles

Today on "how it's made"...

Fencing masks...

Books...

Ocean drone transformers...

And 3-d puzzles.

Fencing is one of the oldest forms of armed combat.

In the late 18th century, fencing evolved into a sport.

As fencing gained popularity, a steel mesh mask was invented to protect the eyes and face from injury.

Before fencers say "en garde," they don a face guard.

Today, fencing is recognized as an olympic sport, so special mesh masks are required to compete.

Regulation fencing masks are made from rectangular pieces of tight steel mesh.

A machinist uses a guillotine blade to cut the corners of the mesh piece on an angle.

Then he transfers the mesh to a press with a large mold that's shaped like a face.

The hydraulically powered mold press bears down on the steel mesh and forces it into a rounded shape.

Using a special tool, the machinist bends steel wire to a form.

He brings the ends of the wire together to close the loop.

An automated welder fuses the ends.

The machinist transfers the hoop to the next fixture and places the rounded steel mesh on top of the hoop.

A frame descends, affixing the mesh to the hoop.

Then multiple welding guns spot-weld the mesh to the hoop.

A large welding gun closes the gaps between the spot-welds.

Once fused, the hoop will prevent the mesh from fraying and add structural rigidity.

Using a nibbler tool, the machinist trims the mesh, revealing a clean edge.

Next, the technician works on the mask's side piece by bending steel wire into a rectangle.

He places the rectangular frame in a fixture and sets a piece of mesh over the frame.

He spot-welds the mesh to the frame.

This step provides a more consistent weld around the entire mask.

Copper welding wheels fuse and seal the mesh to the frame.

Then the machinist uses a grinding wheel to remove any sharp bits or protrusions.

This is the result.

A bending device rounds the part so that it will fit to the sides and top of the head.

He welds the rounded part to the back of the fencing mask.

A large welding gun spot-welds the assembly together in preparation for a final weld.

Once complete, the machinist makes a full seam weld, closing all gaps.

This will prevent a sword from piercing through the mask, potentially wounding the wearer.

Next, the technician pounds out any remaining dents with a hammer, restoring the mask to the desired contours.

He places the fencing mask on a rounded post and uses a plastic mallet to hammer the mask against the post.

This step will improve the overall shape of the mask.

They big is made out of high molecular polyethylene, which is strong and extremely light weight.

The bib includes a thick rubber band that attaches to the mesh mask.

Once the mesh is coated with plastic, another technician installs rubber trim along the perimeter of the mask.

The plastic coating on the mesh insulates the mask, preventing electrical interference from the scoring system's wiring.

The technician pipes epoxy glue around the mask just above the rubber trim.

He pulls the bib's rubber band over the mask and down to the bead of glue at the bottom.

He tucks the pieces of material under the band for a neater look.

As the glue cures, the bib's rubber band adheres to the fencing mask.

Another machinist drills rivet holes through the bib and mesh along the sides of the mask.

Then he inserts and flattens the rivets to pull the bib flush to the mesh.

Each fencing discipline requires its own uniquely designed mask.

Regardless of the design, each mask will allow the athlete to safely enjoy the sport.

Book-making has evolved over time, from scrolls to writing on sheets of paper bound together, to the invention of the printing press.

People continue to develop new ways of recording history.

Today, thanks to digital technology, the possibilities of recording the spoken word are endless.

A fine book-making specialist makes just a few limited edition books per year, using traditional printing and binding techniques.

Production begins with a case of tiny brass molds.

One mold, called a matrix, contains letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.

A typecasting specialist inserts the matrix case into a machine called a monotype composition caster.

And melts lead alloy ingots in the machine's gas heated pot.

Guided by a computer, the machine casts one character at a time for every word of the book.

The computer program assigns a location code to every matrix.

To cast a character, the program communicates a specific code through plastic tubes, while puffs of air align that character's matrix with the injection nozzle.

The nozzle dispenses molten lead into the matrix while the machine ejects the cast character onto a tray called the galley.

As the lines of text exit the machine, the typecast specialist inserts a strip of lead to create spacing, called leading, between each line.

He transfers the galley to the press room, where a proofing press spreads ink on the type.

He places a sheet of newsprint over the galley and releases an impression roller.

The roller prints the characters on to the paper, generating a proof.

Meanwhile, a typesetter assembles the larger display copy manually by placing individual letters into a composition stick.

This method was used for all copy prior to the invention of the automatic typecasting machines in the 1890s.

Books printed in large sizes of type must be made entirely by manual typeset.

Once complete, multiple galleys that make up several pages of the book are placed in a steel frame called a chase and loaded into the printing press.

This cylinder press feeds one sheet of paper at a time to grippers that pull the paper around a cylindrical roller.

As the roller rotates, the paper drops onto the inked type, printing the characters into the sheet.

One press sheet typically contains eight pages per side.

Another machine folds the sheets, then bookbinders manually collate groups of 16 consecutive pages to form sections of the book called signatures.

Next, a bookbinder sews the signatures together one at a time until the book is fully assembled.

This method of bookbinding, called smyth sewn binding, after its 19th century inventor, is of the highest quality because pages can't fall out or be removed.

Like the binding, the book cover is meticulously handcrafted.

A book binder hot glues a piece of cloth to the back of the cover.

The cover is made of flexible paper and thick cardboard.

Then she flattens the cloth on all sides.

Using a razor blade, the book binder makes a slit for the cloth, where she'll place a recessed label later.

This enables the cloth to spread out and form to the spine's rounded shape.

The cloth is pressed firmly against the structural components with a plastic tool called a bone.

Another book binder attaches the cover to the bound pages, called the book block.

First, she applies glue to both components.

Then she positions the book block on the cover...

And presses them together.

She places the book in a nipping press.

That puts pressure around the spine, fusing the book block and cover together.

Then the front and back of the cover are glued to the first and last pages of the book.

The book then sits in another press overnight, bringing this book-making story to a close.

There's a new class of autonomous vehicles that can travel the ocean.

Some dive and some sail, but very few can do both.

An ocean drone transformer shifts from sailboat to submarine by rearranging its shape and altering its mode of operation.

This is an autonomous underwater and surface vehicle.

It's an information-gathering machine capable of propelling itself over and under waves, using nothing but wind and solar power.

To create the vehicle's hull, technicians unroll sheets of fiberglass over a mold, which has been machined from a block of styrofoam.

They fiberglass fabric is cut to fit the interior of the hull.

Thanks to its extraordinary durability, the fiberglass will allow the watercraft to spend months at a time at sea.

And it won't interfere with the vessel's electronic signals.

Technicians carefully tape the material to the mold.

This yellow material will allow liquid resin to flow easily.

Then technicians unroll a strip of gray ribbon which will help direct the flow of resin.

Next, an incision is made in the middle of the ribbon for the nozzle, which will be the entry point for the resin.

A layer of plastic is taped onto the hull, which will help to vacuum seal the assembly together.

A shut-off valve is added to control the flow of resin.

The resin is poured into a container.

And as the resin infuses the flow media, it displaces the vacuum until it has completely saturated the fiberglass material.

The resin is cured for 12 hours.

The mold splits open at the bottom so technicians can easily release the hull assembly.

A technician paints the vehicle's keel, which is made of marine-grade aluminum.

The torpedo-shaped keel bulb is made of lead.

Electric cables run through a hole drilled length-wise down the center of the keel.

The interior structure of the vehicle starts as a flat material made from a combination of fiberglass and epoxy which they form into large sheets using intense heat and pressure.

Then water jet technology precision cuts the sheets into the required shapes and sizes.

Technicians assemble the shapes into a structure that supports the hull while housing the vehicle's equipment.

In-house technicians build the multiple circuit boards that make up the central processing unit, or cpu.

Each board controls a separate element of the vehicle, such as the sensors, the wing, or the communications system.

Electronics and water are not a compatible combination, so the manufacturer designed a water-tight acrylic tube to hold all 10 of the circuit boards that make up the cpu.

Specialized cable connectors are installed so water doesn't leak through the cover plate.

Once the enclosure is sealed, technicians vacuum out flammable oxygen and pump in non-flammable gases to protect the cpu.

A technician prepares the battery, which is an off-the-shelf lithium ion unit.

A battery housing is 3-d printed out of a.b.s. and infused with epoxy to ensure that it's completely water tight.

Next, a technician installs the battery in its designated spot.

Solar panels on the vehicle's surface will recharge the batteries.

A hose will allow the cpu to transfer water from one ballast tank to another to control the boat's up and down motion or pitch.

The vehicle's tails serve as housings for the backup communications antenna system.

In stealth mode, the vehicle can sit below the water surface with only its tails above the waves.

Designed to fold down and tuck into the body of the vehicle, the rigid wing multi-tasks as the primary antenna and the sail, which propels the vehicle when it's above water.

Due to its user-friendly technology, an operator can program a mission at any time from any location via satellite or wi-fi.

The first jigsaw puzzle was invented in europe in 1760.

Nearly two centuries later, a canadian inventor reshaped the popular pastime.

His puzzle pieces, made of thick foam rather than cardboard, could stand upright, turning the puzzle into a three-dimension model.

Constructing a 3-d puzzle yields impressive results.

To do so, two 800-piece puzzle sets are used to create this spectacular castle replica.

An industrial designer creates the puzzle's three-dimensional structure.

An illustrator uses techniques, such as visual textures and shading, to transform flat graphics into a three-dimensional rendering.

The industrial designer prepares the printing and cutting layout, fitting up to three puzzles per sheet.

The puzzle pieces are made from rigid foam.

The foam is specifically engineered to be chemically compatible with the paper graphics and proprietary adhesive.

A technician feeds one sheet at a time into a custom designed lamination machine.

The first station spreads hot glue over the top of the foam sheet.

An automated arm with vacuum suction cups lifts a single sheet of printed paper and places it on the glue-coated foam sheet.

As soon as the paper adheres to the foam, the she is released from the suction cups.

Then the foam moves under a roller that presses down the paper.

As the laminated foam exits the machine, a technician rolls a tube over the foam, pressing out any remaining air bubbles to ensure the paper adheres fully.

In the development phase, the industrial designer assembled a blueprint for how the puzzle pieces would be shaped and laid out.

That design went to a toolmaker who produced a corresponding cutting die out of steel knives.

The die is mounted inside the cutting machine.

A technician feeds the machine one laminated foam sheet at a time, paper side down.

Grippers grab the edge of the paper, pulling the sheet into the machine.

The cutting die slices the puzzle pieces into the foam.

Even though the cutting pressure compresses the foam, it immediately bounces back, keeping the sheet intact.

Thanks to a high-quality rubber sheet inserted between the blades, the pieces don't get stuck in the die.

The stiff rubber provides counter-pressure to help remove the foam sheet.

If the sheet has two or three puzzles printed on it, the cutting die separates them.

Then a technician places the puzzle on a semi-automatic conveyor belt that moves it to the dismantling machine.

The machine infuses the die-cut puzzle sheet with steam.

The steam prevents static electricity, which causes pieces to cling together or to the inside of the machine.

The machine separates the pieces.

And dispenses them into a puzzle box.

A technician adds the standard instructions sheet, and seals the box.

The instructions are in black and white, but can be viewed in color online.

The first step is to sort the pieces by color and design and set aside the ones marked with a red dot which is part of the manufacturing process, not the puzzle itself.

The next step is to assemble the puzzle, section by section.

All the sections are flat, so the final step is to attach the flat sections to make the puzzle three-dimensional.

For an additional challenge, you can forgo the step-by-step instructions and refer only to the photos on the box.

If you happen to lose a puzzle piece, you can go to the company's website to trace the number of your missing piece, then order a new piece online.

The company will mail it to you so that you can complete your puzzle.

Unlike a traditional flat puzzle, you can move your 3-d puzzle without it falling apart.

It takes four to six months to develop and design this incredible 3-d puzzle.

Now it's time to spend even longer piecing this puzzle together.


Putty Knives
Garage Doors
Electric Motors
Wool

Today, on "how it's made"...

Putty knives...

Garage doors...

Electric motors...

And wool.

Rummage through a do-it-yourselfer's toolbox, and chances are, you'll come across a putty knife or two.

They come in several widths.

So whether you're scraping off paint, old wallpaper, or installing drywall, there's a putty knife that's the right size and shape for the job.

These putty-knife blades are made of steel that's flexible and durable, due in part to its high carbon content.

Production begins with workers feeding steel sheets into a press one by one.

The press's cutting guy punches out a blade for the type of putty knife they're producing.

The next press punches three rivet holes in the handle portion of the blade.

These are for attaching a hard plastic handle.

For models that'll have a handle made of a softer, rubberlike plastic, they fishbone the handle portion of the blade, so that it'll grip the plastic.

Steel has to be heat-treated to gain its full flexibility and strength.

First, they submerge the blades in a bath of molten salt.

The heat is intense--  1,400 degrees fahrenheit.

The blades soak for about a minute-- the time it takes for the metal temperature to rise to that of the tank.

As it does, the steel's molecular structure begins to change.

From here, they transfer the blades to two successively cooler salt baths.

That quenching, as it's called, further hardens the steel.

The blades are then tempered in an oven for eight hours at 400 degrees fahrenheit.

This gives the steel memory, meaning the blade will revert to its original shape when bent.

After heat treatment, lukewarm water jets rinse off the salt residue and cool the metal to room temperature.

Now that the metal has the required properties, the blades need the right profile.

A worker lays them on a magnetic plate that angles them downward.

The plate spins, running the blades against a grinding wheel.

It takes about 30 seconds of grinding to profile each blade and form the flex point-- the thinnest and most flexible part that's 1 1/2 inches from the end of the blade.

Blade profiles vary, because some jobs require a more flexible tool than others.

Now they clean the blades in a revolving drum filled with absorbent sand.

This removes oil and other residues left by the production process, and it preps the surface for the protective layer of lacquer that's applied next.

After coating the blades in lacquer, they dry them in an oven.

This seals the metal, preventing rust.

Assembly is completely automated.

The first machine slips on the plastic handle.

The next machine rivets it on.

The following machine slaps on a label, which identifies the size and type of putty knife.

Professional-quality putty knives have a thicker, stiffer blade.

The handle is made up of two halves.

The machine positions them onto the handle portion of the blade, then attaches them with a hollow ribbon.

This enables the knife to be hung up.

This factory also produces retractable utility knives.

It puts the cast aluminum handles through a machine that uses polishing stones to remove any shards of metal.

Workers assemble the utility knives manually, first installing the push button that moves the blade in and out.

After putting in a spare blade, they close up the handle with one screw.

This factory produces 150 different paint-preparation tools for a wide range of uses, from scraping to filling to smoothing out tape on wall joints.

Garage doors come in many styles, colors, and materials.

They can be made of steel, aluminum, wood, or vinyl.

Whether you choose a style that's plain, paneled, smooth, or textured, quality garage doors are lightweight, well-insulated, and airtight.

The typical residential garage door is made up of four panels.

Each one begins as a sheet of either aluminum or steel-- two metals that can tolerate harsh climates.

The side that will show has a baked-on coat of polyester paint.

Depending on the model, the sheet passes through rollers that imprint a texture, such as a simulated wood grain.

Then it goes through a press that imprints a design.

This model will have raised rectangles.

Others have horizontal stripes or no design at all.

After an automated machine cuts the continuous sheet to garage-door widths, another machine folds over the edges.

This creates half-inch joints for attaching the panels.

The polyester paint is elastic, so it simply stretches with the bending.

Now on the back side of the sheets, they hot-glue metal plates to reinforce the various components they'll later screw into the garage door, parts such as the lift handles, the hinge, and the bracket for the electric opener mechanism.

They also drill a hole through which they'll later inject insulation.

Now they slide two sheets together to form a panel.

They close off the ends with blocks of pine.

This will prevent cold air from penetrating inside.

They apply various stickers with installation, maintenance, and safety information.

Orange stick-on dots mark the location of the metal plates into which the installer will screw the hinges and lift handles.

They attach an aluminum bar to the long ends of each panel.

This holds the panel steady during the injection process.

After injection, the bars come off.

They load the panels onto a carousel and begin the process of filling the hollow interior cavity with insulation.

Through the hole they drilled earlier, they inject polyurethane foam, an expanding, plastic insulation material that's specially designed to penetrate hard-to-access spaces.

As we see in this demonstration, the polyurethane expands and becomes rigid.

This creates a solid core inside the garage door.

Polyurethane is one of the lightest types of insulation, so it doesn't make the garage door heavy.

Here's what the inside of a panel looks like once the foam hardens.

Now workers install various components, such as the rubber weather seal on the bottom panel.

This seal prevents cold air and water from entering the garage under the door.

Some garage-door models have windows to allow in natural light.

Workers first use a high-speed router to remove the rectangles where these windows will be installed.

Then they insert one of several window styles available.

These are double-sealed windows-- two thermal panes with an aluminum spacer in between.

The framing around the glass comes in different colors.

It's made of pvc-- a synthetic resin that doesn't discolor.

The frame prevents water and cold air from penetrating through the window.

Workers pack the installation hardware.

Then they weigh the box to ensure no part was left out.

At installation time, they attach the door panels at the joints with hinges.

A system of springs ensures the garage door is perfectly balanced and moves smoothly.

If properly installed, you should be able to lift or lower the garage door using two fingers.

Electric motors are made of two main components-- one stationary, called the stator, the other a rotor that moves inside the stator.

The stator has multiple wire coils.

Running electricity through them creates a concentrated magnetic field that turns the rotor, creating mechanical power.

The stator is lined with slots, each of which holds a copper coil.

The more powerful the motor, the bigger the stator and the larger the slots.

The first step is to line the slots with insulation.

This insulation will keep the voltage confined to the coils.

The coils are made from several copper wires wound together by programmable machines.

The bigger the motor, the more wires per coil.

In this motor, each coil consists of 13 strands of copper wire.

Now workers tie the coils.

This prevents the wires from unraveling while being inserted into the stator slots.

Workers cap each coil with fiberglass insulation.

Then they insulate the portion of the coil left outside the slots with fiberglass sheets.

Fiberglass wedges are inserted, locking the coils inside the slots.

Once all the coils are inserted and insulated, workers begin preparing the connection.

They slip an acrylic insulation sleeve over both ends of each coil--  13 coils, 26 ends.

Then they group these insulated wires into large power cables.

The number of wires per cable varies according to the speed and voltage of the motor.

They solder the grouped wires together, then insulate the cables.

They tuck some inside the stator and leave others accessible to be attached to a power source when the motor is installed.

Now, using a cord made of heat- and chemical-resistant polyester, they bind the coils tightly to ensure they won't move when the motor spins.

This unit of bound coils is known as the stator coil.

They now submerge the stator in a polyester-based varnish and vacuum it right through.

This thorough penetration makes the stator coil moisture-resistant.

The stator is put into an oven for six hours at 280 degrees fahrenheit.

The varnish hardens, making the stator coil rigid.

Now they have to balance the rotor.

If it's off-kilter, the motor will vibrate, hampering performance.

They balance it the same way a mechanic balances car tires, only with 100 times greater precision.

Now they slowly slide the rotor into the stator, careful not to damage the stator coil.

The rotor will turn on steel bearings.

They heat these bearings to expand them, so they'll install easily.

Then they blow on cold air to shrink them to a tight fit.

It's the same process with the motor's back cover.

Now they heat the fan and install it over the back cover.

The fan's job is to cool the running motor so that it doesn't overheat and break down.

They cover the fan with a safety guard, then install a cover on the front of the motor as well.

They run the finished motor through various tests to assess, among other things, insulation strength and performance.

These industrial motors are designed for use in factories, for running machinery, such as conveyer belts, pumps, fans, and compressors.

What do wool and hand cream have in common?

Well, a sheep's fleece has an oily protective coating which contains a substance called wool grease.

When factories make yarn, they first clean the wool with detergents.

The grease is processed into lanolin-- a common ingredient in hand creams.

Historians believe that people began raising sheep for food and clothing about 10,000 years ago.

And around 4,000 b.c., they started spinning the wool into yarn for weaving fabric.

The romans brought wool production to england in about 50 a.d. woolen fabrics would become the country's chief export for centuries.

In 1797, britain shipped 13 sheep to australia, starting what would become the largest wool industry in the world today.

Wool fabric is durable, wrinkle-proof, and holds its shape well.

It absorbs moisture and insulates against heat and cold.

That's why wool is ideal for clothing like sweaters and coats.

Sheep shearers use power shears, removing the fleece in one piece.

They discard any stained or inferior wool and then sort the rest according to the quality of the fibers.

This grading is based on length, color, waviness, and fineness.

The wool is cleaned with detergents before processing.

The wool arrives at the factory in compressed bales.

Workers untie them and feed the wool into the opening equipment, whose metal tooth rollers comb out and separate the fibers.

From there, the fibers go into the blending room, where air currents mix different grades of wool to get the desired texture.

If they'll be weaving a wool blend, they mix the wool fibers with other material, such as polyester fibers.

A thorough blending takes about an hour.

An air pipe transports the blended fibers to the next station.

On the way, sprayers lubricate them with a mineral-oil mixture to make processing easier.

The fibers arrive at the carding machine, where they pass through a series of rollers with thin wire teeth.

This untangles the fibers and lines them up parallel to each other.

This process also removes any pieces of debris caught in the fibers.

The carding process produces a smooth, flat sheet called a web.

The equipment divides this web into thin, flat strips.

These strips go through rub aprons-- two rollers that twirl them into thinner, rounded strips, called rovings.

The rovings wind onto a spool.

Rovings look like yarn.

But if you pull on them, they simply tear.

They haven't been spun, so they have no strength.

Each roving goes into a device called a spinning frame.

It stretches the roving and spins it tightly, producing wool yarn.

The yarn winds onto a bobbin.

Spinning gives the yarn strength.

Now they can weave it into wool fabric.

A fully automated loom does it all.

Watch in slow motion as it inserts one strand at a time crosswise through stationary lengthwise strands.

It's computer-programmed to thread in a specific under/over configuration, according to the type of weave.

The loom inserts 400 strands per minute.

After weaving, they burn off vegetal matter, such as straw fragments, then they dye and dry the fabric.

All wool fabrics undergo finishing to give them a particular appearance and feel.

These spiked rollers created a plush finish.

Wool fabrics can also have a sheered or flat finish.


Carved Wood Sculptures
Flatware
Cow Bells
Fountain Pens

Val gardena, a valley in the italian alps, is renowned for woodcarving.

This craft began there in the 17th century as a way to pass the time during the long mountain winters.

At first, woodcarvers made practical items, but before long, their masterful hands were creating works of art.

From pastoral scenes to religious themes, these magnificently carved wood sculptures seem almost lifelike.

After sketching the figure on paper, the carver sculpts a three-dimensional model from a block of plasticine.

Using his hands and an array of tools, he meticulously fashions all the intricate details he'll later re-create in wood.

For this flute-playing angel, he positions a replica of the instrument to get the angle of her arms and opening of her hands just right.

Next, using the plasticine model as a reference, he draws the figure onto a block of wood roughly the size and shape of the sculpture.

Using a mallet and chisels, he begins chipping away at the block of wood.

This is stone pine wood, a rare species that grows in the higher mountain valleys of the alps.

Pine is a soft wood, so it's ideal for carving.

When it comes time for the finer work-- carving the details and smoothing out the surface-- he switches to a fine paring chisel.

From the finished wood model, the factory casts a bronze copy to use for producing the final sculptures out of maple wood.

When the maple planks arrive at the factory, their moisture level, as this hydrometer reading shows, is typically between 70% and 80%.

If they carve the wood while it's still wet, the sculpture would eventually crack, so they load the wood into a giant dryer for about a week to bring the moisture down to an ideal 6%.

When the wood comes out of the dryer, they trim off the bark with a circular saw then cut off all but the best part in the middle.

They trim those middle pieces into uniform blocks just slightly larger than the size of the sculpture.

20 blocks at a time go onto a machine called a pantograph, a sharp carving head over each block.

Those 20 carving heads are linked to a blunt master head.

A technician slowly moves this master head over every inch of the bronze model.

This simultaneously manipulates the 20 carving heads to shape their respective blocks into fairly unrefined copies of the model in half the size.

The machine can't reproduce the fine details, so the original carver returns to personally carve each and every sculpture to completion.

By the time he's done, what once was an ordinary block of wood is forever transformed.

Now the sculpture truly comes alive in the talented hands of an artist.

With her palette of oil pants, she dresses the bare wood, alternating between different brushes to create varying textures.

Technique is everything here.

She must apply enough paint to cover the bare wood and enhance the craftsmanship, yet not apply too much paint.

Otherwise, this exquisitely carved sculpture could look like cheap plastic.

Once the paint dries, they glue a metal disk with the company name into a hole under the base.

Then they package the piece with protective wrapping and a certificate of authenticity that guarantees this is a genuine carved-wood sculpture from val gardena, italy.

Throughout the centuries, man fashioned eating utensils out of various metals.

The 1840s saw the invention of silver plating over inexpensive base metals.

Sterling silver and silver plate remained the norm until the early 1950s, when stainless-steel flatware made its debut.

Stainless steel flatware is durable and, unlike silver plate, doesn't dull, tarnish, or wear off.

This flatware starts out as thick wire called coil.

To make knives, the coil goes into a heading machine that cuts pieces to blade length, then forms them into blank shapes with a head at one end.

This bolster, as it's called, will connect the blade to the knife handle.

A furnace softens the metal for the final shaping in a forging press.

Three dies progressively forge the shape and trim off the excess metal.

After grinding the end of the bolster flat, the next machine welds on the tang, which fits inside the knife handle.

Now an automated grinding wheel tapers the blade thinner at the front.

A second grinding wheel scallops the front edge.

This is the knife's serration.

The thicker back end gives the blade strength to withstand the pressure you apply when cutting food.

For the knife handles, the factory uses stainless steel with a higher nickel content.

It has greater corrosion resistance and is easier to form, which is critical, given that handles often feature very intricate designs.

Handles, too, start out as coil that goes through a series of dies.

Each finished piece is half a handle.

A spot-welding machine tacks the two halves together, forming a handle shell.

To fuse the halves completely, this machine cuts a piece of copper-based wire and drops it inside the hollow handle.

A furnace melts the wire so that it flows into the crevice between the two halves, soldering the seam thoroughly.

An etching machine grinds the solder line until it blends in with the surrounding stainless steel.

Workers pour liquid cement into the center of a carousel on which they mount 50 handles at a time.

As the carousel spins, the centrifugal force shoots the cement outward, filling the handle cavities.

Then workers insert a blade into each one.

A 10-minute soak in hot water cures the cement.

Workers scrub off any excess cement that oozed out.

On the spoon line, a press cuts standard steel into paintbrush-shaped pieces.

Then heavy rollers stretch those pieces out, thinning the end that'll become the spoon's bowl.

A trim press then cuts the spoon's profile.

Next, a machine called a coining press punches the pattern into the handle then forms the bowl to its rounded shape.

Forks go through the same steps as spoons then through a press that cuts the tines in two stages.

A support bar keeps the tines from moving, while a coining press puts a slight bend in them.

The next machine slices off that bar and stacks the finished forks.

The last stop for all the flatware is the buffing equipment.

Cloth wheels polish the surface with liquid buffing compound until the steel shines.

The casual patterns are now ready for packaging.

The more formal ones get dressed up with full or partial plating in silver or gold.

In the swiss countryside, the cowbell is a traditional sight and sound.

At roundup, as the cows start walking, their bells clang and wake up the sleeping cows, telling them it's time to move.

At pasture, if a cow wanders off from the herd, its bell alerts the farmer.

swiss cowbells also play a ceremonial roll.

Farmers adorn their prize livestock with them.

The larger and more ornate the bell, the greater the farmer's pride in the animal.

Finer cowbells are made by artisans, like this one in switzerland.

He starts by laying a template on a sheet of steel that's 2 to 3 millimeters thick, depending on the type of bell.

With the plasma cutter, he cuts two pieces.

Each will form half the bell.

While each piece is still flat, he engraves a design using a hammer and burins of various sizes.

A burin is handled blade with a beveled tip.

Next, he heats a spot then stamps his logo and the bell size, according to a swiss numbering system.

Next stop, a gas-fired furnace.

The 1,800-degree-fahrenheit heat softens the metal, which he then lays in a forging press.

The press closes, shaping the piece into half a cowbell.

He repeats this process with a second piece to make the other half.

Then he refines the shape and thickness using a variety of hammers.

Forging each flat sheet into a half-bell made lines on the sides.

He now welds and then grinds those seams flat.

He hammers every centimeter of each bell half to refine and purify the sound.

It's time to weld the two halves together.

He tacks them in place then welds the entire seam.

Later, he'll grind the weld line flush with the bell's surface.

Next, he welds a steel handle to the top of the bell.

This will hold the leather strap from which the cowbell will hang.

Beneath the handle, on the inside, he welds on a v-shaped rod to hold the battle, the swinging hammer that strikes the bell's inner walls.

On each side, he pierces two holes for rivets where the bell halves cross over each other.

With a torch and a forging tool, he shapes each top rivet until it's nice and round.

Then he hammers each bottom rivet flat to make them unnoticeable.

Here he melts a brass bullet casing riveted area.

That white powder is borax, a mineral that helps the soldering process.

Adding this little bit of brass solidifies the fold and improves the bell's sound quality.

The cowbell's construction is now complete.

However, all that forging and welding has left dark spots on the steel.

So, the bell now goes for a 15-hour bath in hydrochloric acid.

This cleaning makes the bell even-toned and shiny.

A thorough washing removes the acid residue.

Then it's into a basin of sawdust to dry.

Sawdust absorbs water faster than cloths do.

The engraved decorations don't show up well on the shiny surface, so the artisan brushes acid on strategic spots to oxidize the steel and create the illusion of relief.

It takes tremendous skill to milk a beautiful cowbell out of an ordinary sheet of steel.

But there's still the decorative leather strap, which is the job of a saddlemaker.

some bells are simple, others elaborately decorated with baked-on enamel colors.

Either way, a fine, handcrafted cowbell will last for generations.

The fountain pen was invented in 1884.

Until then, people wrote with quills or steel pens, which required repeated dipping in a bottle of ink.

The fountain pen was revolutionary because it held its own ink in a built-in reservoir.

Discriminating writers still consider the fountain pen the ultimate writing instrument.

These high-end, italian-made fountain pens have a tubular middle called the barrel, which houses the ink reservoir.

There are various types of mechanisms for filling the barrel.

This one is called the filler pump.

It works just like a syringe.

You unscrew the end, which draws a piston upward, creating a vacuum that sucks up the ink.

When you write, the ink flows through a speed-regulating feeder to the nib of the pen.

Nibs are made of stainless steel or, in luxury pens like these, solid gold.

To make the nib, rollers flatten a piece of gold.

Then a press cuts out a starting shape, with a stress-relief hole to keep the nib from cracking when it flexes.

Another press stamps the caret marking and company name then bends the piece to its final shape.

A worker cuts the ink pathway using a diamond cutting wheel thinner than a human hair.

To fortify the nib's tip, this machine welds on a tiny glob of iridium, a durable metal in the platinum family.

Workers grind the iridium tip to a precise size and shape.

This is what dictates the thickness of the pen's line, from fine to broad, and the line's style, such as italic or oblique.

Polishing is the final stop on the journey from plain piece of gold to ornate nib.

The feeder that transfers ink from the reservoir to the nib is made from a cylindrical piece of ebonite, which they cut to a point.

These blades carve grooves down the sides.

When you write, these grooves fill with ink, regulating the rate of the ink flow.

One end of the feeder goes into a holder.

The other end slips behind the nib.

This machine pushes the nib into its final position, which technicians verify under a magnifier.

Elsewhere in the factory, they produce the pen's external parts.

Here, presses and metal drawing machinery shape sterling-silver disks into pen caps.

The cap protects the nib, of course, but it also provides decorative flare, often having guilloche, an intricate, diamond-cut engraving.

The factory's computer-guided engraving equipment decorates this model with subtle stripes.

A rolling engraver then applies the company's name.

Every cap has a clip made of beryllium copper, a strong yet flexible metal which they plate in gold.

The barrel and other parts for many models are made from plastic resin.

An injection-molding machine melts resin pellets into liquid then shoots it into molds.

When the resin solidifies, the machine ejects the molded parts ready for polishing.

The pieces join to each other with metal connecting rings.

The pen assembler carefully measures the placement of the resin piston within the barrel.

Once the piston's inserted, the edge of the barrel gets a thin coat of sealant to prevent ink leaks.

Then the assembler screws on the endpiece, the same one you unscrew to draw up the piston and fill the pen.

The finishing touch is to mount the nib.

Finally, every pen goes through a specific set of writing tests to ensure its performance measures up to its stylish good looks.


To contain the sounds of traffic, it's often necessary to put up a wall of silence.

Noise-barrier walls both absorb traffic noise and shield neighborhoods from it.

With stone or brick-like textures on both sides, they even look good on the street.

In the 1970s, noise-barrier walls were mainly drab concrete.

Fast forward to today, and the walls come in a range of textures and designs for curb appeal.

But of course, it's their noise-absorbing qualities that really improve the neighborhood.

They're made from a wood shaving and cement material that's very porous, which allows the walls to absorb sound and entrap it.

Production starts with the raw shavings.

A conveyor delivers them to a hammer mill.

Inside, rotating hammers force the wood shavings through a cutting screen.

This carves them into smaller particles of various sizes.

It's this combination of sizes that will create the noise-absorbing pores in the completed wall.

They test a proprietary chemical solution, that will be used to treat the wood particles, and confirm it's the right concentration.

An auger then mixes it into the wood particles until they're damp and thoroughly coated.

Without this treatment, the wood particles wouldn't bind with cement.

It will also protect the wood from decay.

In another mixer, they add water and a second chemical solution to further enhance the binding process.

The wood particles are now primed and ready to be mixed with a powdered mix of limestone clay called portland cement.

The machine works the ingredients until they form a cohesive material that can be shaped.

The next worker sprays a release agent onto the stone-pattern liner.

Each mold will form one noise barrier panel.

The team transfers the wood-and-cement blend into the mold.

They work at a steady pace to fill it before the mixture begins to dry.

Once they've filled it partway, they level the wood-cement material...

Then compact it with a tamping tool.

Next, they add a steel mesh.

This mesh will serve as a skeleton, allowing the wall to stand strong.

They pour freshly mixed concrete onto the steel mesh.

It flows through the mesh and onto the sound-absorbing mixture below, binding the two layers together.

The worker spreads the concrete throughout the mold.

He pierces the surface with a vibrating tool.

The vibrations consolidate the concrete and eliminate air pockets.

The two-person team levels the concrete layer using a wood screed.

They apply a second layer of the noise-absorbing material and level it.

They lower the stone-pattern press lid, which will mold the pattern onto the top side of the panel.

They set a 10-ton concrete block on the mold, and pressure forces the mold patterns onto both sides of the casting.

After a few minutes, they remove the lid, and the imprint is revealed.

They quickly cover the panel surface with a plastic sheet to prevent any evaporation of moisture as the cure continues.

If the blend cures too quickly, it could crack.

After another day, they remove the tarp and they're ready to extract the panel from the mold.

A crane lifts the panel and sets it aside to cure for about a month.

Built panel by panel, these noise-barrier walls can become a substantial fortress, providing a solid defense against noise pollution.

Front-loading washing machines use far less water than standard washers.

They're gentler on clothes because there's no agitator in the middle of the drum.

The spin speed is usually about 20 percent faster than the standard top-load machine, so the clothes come out of the wash drier.

With gravity helping tumble the laundry, a front-load washer is gentler on the clothes while using less water.

Its design can also accommodate a larger-capacity drum, so you can do bigger loads.

The washer's cabinet is made of steel.

A washing machine is routinely exposed to moisture, so they use galvanized steel, which doesn't rust.

The cabinet base is comprised of four pieces, which, together, provide more structural strength than a single piece would.

At the corners, workers install four screw-in rubber feet which are height-adjustable.

This allows the washer to level on an uneven floor.

Next are the two side panels.

They are already stamped to the required shape in a press and coated with baked-on paint.

This automated machine installs brackets on the inner side for mounting components later on.

The next automated machine attaches the side panels to the cabinet.

Rather than welding the edges, which would ruin the paint finish, the machine's punch tools mechanically lock them to the base.

A robot then transfers the cabinet to the assembly line.

Here, workers connect the side panels with a structural support bracket and power cord, already installed on it.

Workers prepare the rear portion of the machine's two-piece plastic tub.

First, a robot mounts a steel bearing on a press.

The press then forces the bearing into a hole at the bottom of the inside of the tub.

Then the process is repeated but on the outside of the tub.

This pair of bearings seals the hole to prevent leaks, and enables the stainless-steel wash drum to spin.

To counterbalance the spinning load, they weight the front of the drum with a plastic ring, containing heavy steel balls suspended in fluid.

Then, they insert the shaft at the base of the drum into the tub's bearings and cover the top of the drum with the front section of the tub.

It has a rubber gasket called a bellow.

The bellow forms a leak-proof seal around the drum.

After welding the tub sections together, they mount the washer's motor to the rear.

In this stator-rotor motor, the electric current travels through the coiled copper wires of the motor's stator, generating pulses of electricity.

Those pulses push on magnets lining the motor's rotor, positioned on top.

The magnets repel the pulses, and this repeated pulse repelling drives the drum in the direction and speed required.

Next, they install a drain hose on the side of the tub and attach it with a retainer clip.

They bolt a piece of concrete to either side of the drum opening to counterbalance the weight of the motor on the back.

Then, they turn the now-complete wash unit on its side and install it in the cabinet.

Next, they mount the drain pump in the cabinet base and connect its wiring.

The pump's job is to remove dirty water from the tub.

Four shock absorbers are installed between the bottom of the wash unit and the base.

These large pistons dampen much of the vibration during the wash and spin cycles.

Next, the front panel.

Like the sides, it's made of a stamped sheet of galvanized steel with a baked-on paint finish.

They install and connect the console, which houses the machine's central control module.

They pull the bellow on the drum all around the front opening to seal the perimeter.

They secure it in place with a wire retainer clip.

The hinged door has a see-through plastic window.

Like the rest of the machine's metal parts, the door panel and hardware attaching it are also made of galvanized steel.

The back panel is left unpainted.

After feeding the power cord through its hole, workers screw the panel to the rest of the cabinet.

Then, they complete the cabinet with the top panel, which has the baked-on paint finish.

The front-load washing machine is now all set and ready for its first load.

Bourbon whiskey is uniquely american.

The u.s. congress officially recognized it as a product distinct to the nation.

This amber-hued brew was first cooked up by scottish and irish settlers in late 18th century kentucky.

Today, production continues there with the approval of congress.

The american government regulates the making of bourbon to keep this native spirit true to tradition.

By law, it must be made from a grain mix that's at least 51% corn.

Distillers often use more for flavor.

Shakers sift out cobs or other foreign material, and the kernels head into a grinder.

Inside, rollers crush the kernels to release the flavor of the starch.

The process leaves larger chunks of the corn germ and husks.

Once distilled, these bits will settle out.

In separate batches, the machine also grinds malted barley and soft red winter wheat.

They cook the corn and blend it with limestone-rich, iron-free kentucky water.

They add the barley, winter wheat, and a bit of mash from a previous batch.

Along with a special yeast formulation, the grain mash flows into fermentation tanks made of cypress wood.

After 8 to 10 hours, the yeast works its magic and the mash becomes a bubbling brew.

The bubbling is caused by the release of carbon-dioxide gas as the grain sugars ferment and become alcohol.

After three days, it has fermented into a thick liquid they call 'distiller's beer".

They pump it into a column still which boils off the alcohol, leaving water and other substances behind.

The alcoholic vapor rises up to be condensed into liquid.

After distilling it a second time, the alcohol concentration rises to a strong 130 proof.

It's clear, with no noticeable color.

At this stage, they call it "white dog".

Once water has been added to dilute the whiskey to 110 proof, an employee takes a sample and sends it to the lab.

There, a technician places a test tube of the alcohol into a gas chromatograph tester.

It vaporizes the alcohol and then analyzes the flavor compounds and alcohol strength.

With approval from the lab, they're ready to barrel the batch.

They pump it out of storage tanks and into new oak barrels that have been purposely charred on the inside.

Charring caramelizes naturally occurring wood sugars to add sweetness to the alcohol as it ages.

It will also turn the clear alcohol an amber color.

Once corked with a walnut stopper, the employee rolls the barrel into a multi-tiered warehouse.

Here, the bourbon will age for many years.

Partway through, they'll move the barrel to another level of the building due to temperature variations.

This will make the product more consistent.

After six to seven years, they uncork the stopper and insert steel tubes to draw in ambient air.

This causes the bourbon to flow freely when tipped, and it gushes into a trough.

The alcohol has ripened to a sweet caramel-colored brew.

After they add more water to make it 90 proof, it's ready for bottling.

Nozzles fill the bottles with bourbon right to the neck.

The bottles then circle over to the cap applicators.

The applicators spin metal caps, screwing them onto the bottles.

The bottles then ride a carousel and a device picks up and applies the labels.

A brush smoothes them to the bottles.

Down the line, a two-person team retrieves the bottles and dips the caps in hot wax.

The wax quickly dries and solidifies to give the bourbon a better seal.

After several years in the distillery, this kentucky bourbon has come of age, and that calls for a toast.

The circuit board is where the electronic components are located, along with the electrical connections which power them.

In a larger device, such as a computer, the circuit board is typically rigid.

When the device is compact, like a small camera, the circuit board must be flexible.

It needs to fold to fit inside.

Flexible circuit boards are so thin and pliable, they're nicknamed origami circuitry, after the japanese art of paper folding.

At the core of the boards is a hair-thin polymer film that's both bendable and heat resistant.

The manufacturer produces this material for several industries.

In this case, they cut rolls of it to the width required for making flexible circuit boards.

With a rigid sheet of paper lending support from underneath, the film enters a machine which sandwiches it between two thin sheets of copper.

A cutter then slices the sandwich into rectangular sheets.

A cushion of air pumped through the conveyor belt literally floats sheet after sheet off the machine and into a stack.

Each three-layer sheet is separated from the next by the support paper called a laminate.

The film at the center has a heat-activated adhesive coating, while the adjoining copper surfaces have been chemically roughened to enhance adhesion.

After drawing the layers tightly together with a vacuum, workers place the laminates in a high-temperature, high-pressure chamber for several hours.

This activates the adhesive, bonding the layers.

To test the bond strength, they burn some adhesive off a sample of finished laminate to pry apart the layered edge.

Then, they grab the top copper layer with this pulling device and measure the strength required to peel it off the film.

The laminate's now shipped to a circuit board factory.

Here, computer-guided machines cut them into specific-sized panels and drill tiny holes for mounting the electronic components.

Then a coating machine uses a combination of heat and pressure to apply a light-sensitive fluid to the panel's surface.

Technicians load the panel into an exposure machine, in which a computer-guided laser scans the circuitry pattern onto the coded surface.

A laser is a beam of focused light, so wherever it hits, the fluid reacts and hardens.

The dark areas of unexposed fluid remain soft.

The next machine acid-washes the soft areas, removing both the fluid and the copper layer underneath it.

Now the only copper remaining on top of the polymer film is in the circuitry pattern.

This inspection device meticulously checks every single copper circuit.

Next, they remove surface dust with a sticky roller.

The panel must be pristine before receiving the sheet of electrical insulation, a mere .

25 of a millimeter thick.

Technicians use a magnifier to carefully match up alignment holes on the film with corresponding alignment holes on the panel.

By activating the film's built-in adhesive with a soldering iron, they tack the insulation to the panel at key spots.

The next step is to fully laminate the insulation to the panel.

Technicians sandwich two panels at a time between sheets of protective plastic.

This protects the surfaces from the heat and weight of the lamination press.

As it forces the insulation film deep down onto the panel, it encapsulates the circuitry.

They load the panels into the lamination press, apply a vacuum to remove the air between the layers and start her up.

For the next hour and a half, the press simultaneously applies high pressure while heating the panels to 400 degrees fahrenheit.

When the panels cool and come out of the press, technicians place one at a time on a circuit board-shaped dye.

Then they release a press which forces the panel onto the sharp dye, slicing away the excess material.

The flexible circuit board is now ready for the company that installs the electronic components.

There are two ways to mount components-- solder them directly onto the board's surface or solder tiny prongs underneath the components, known as leads, into the board's mounting holes.

A flexible circuit board can have as few as a dozen components or as many as 500.

Technicians can solder larger ones magnified under a microscope, but only robots can solder smaller ones because they're so tiny and barely visible to the human eye.


Farmed Caviar
Intake Manifolds
Motorcycle Jackets
Shovels & Spades

Caviar is a term for the salted eggs of the sturgeon fish.

A pearly delicacy, they've long been the snack food of the privileged, enjoyed for centuries by roman emperors, saudi sheikhs, russian czars, and english kings.

A few nibbles still offer a taste of the high life.

Caviar is sometimes called "black gold".

No wonder.

A teaspoon of fish eggs costs more than a meal at some family restaurants.

For most of us, a little caviar is a big splurge.

Overfishing has depleted wild siberian sturgeon stocks.

So at this hatchery in the southern united states, they farm the species for their eggs and flesh.

They feed the young fish high-protein pellets.

The juvenile sturgeon fish needs constant nourishment to develop.

A computerized system dispenses feed every four minutes.

As the fish grow larger, the feeding schedule ratchets down a bit.

The fish produce tiny metabolites that are toxic to them.

Those are filtered out by bacteria introduced for this purpose.

Staff routinely test the tank water to ensure the bacteria are doing their job adequately.

After a few months of growth, they transfer the fish to larger tanks.

Here, mesh drums filter the solid waste they produce.

Pumps constantly circulate the water to move it through plastic nuggets that house the all-important filtering bacteria.

Circulating the water also disperses carbon dioxide gas emitted by the fish and introduces oxygen, which they need to survive and thrive.

Ordinary molasses injected into the tanks is consumed by the beneficial bacteria, helping them to process the harmful metabolites produced by the fish.

After five to seven years of growth, the fish are at least a yard in length, and they should be full of eggs.

Workers transfer them to tubs and mix in a gas to put the fish to sleep.

Now sedated, the fish can be more easily handled and are taken to the ultrasound station.

Using high-frequency sound waves, they probe the sturgeon's ovaries.

This gives them a clear picture of her egg production.

She should contain tens of thousands of eggs.

If not, she'll go back into the tank to mature some more.

But if she's ready, they'll harvest the ovaries.

They clean the egg-laden ovaries and transfer them by the bagful to a chilled room with filtered air.

This is just one of the siberian sturgeon's two ovaries, and it's a mass of roe-- fish eggs that are about to become pure caviar.

They're extremely fragile and need careful handling to separate them from the membrane.

This worker gently rubs the eggs against a mesh screen.

She sets the tissue aside for composting and lifts the screen, revealing the thousands of delicate sturgeon eggs.

But this caviar isn't quite ready yet.

She now rinses the eggs repeatedly with cold water to wash away impurities, like bits of broken eggs and tissue residue.

Using tweezers, she picks out remaining specks of membrane and crushed egg remnants until what's left is pure and perfect.

She pours the eggs into a fine mesh colander.

The volume decreases as the water drains off.

She weighs the drained caviar and seasons it with salt, measuring an amount that's about 3.5% of the caviar's weight.

This precise salting maximizes the caviar's flavor and substantially improves shelf life.

She puts the eggs on ice for about six minutes to absorb the salt.

The salt draws out more moisture, so she drains it one more time.

She then blots up remaining moisture with a highly absorbent paper towel.

She pulls away the towel gently, leaving the pearls of caviar intact.

She packs it into a lacquer-lined tin and presses down the clusters of eggs to eliminate any air pockets, which would cause oxidation and spoilage.

She seals the tin with a thick band of rubber.

This caviar has been many years in the making...

Farm-produced.

No wild fish were destroyed to get these eggs to market, and that means they should appeal to a growing appetite for something a little more sustainable.

The intake manifold distributes the air-and-fuel mixture to the engine cylinders.

Inside, a spark plug ignites the mix, setting off a combustion cycle which ultimately propels the vehicle.

For optimal performance and efficiency, the manifold must distribute to all the cylinders evenly.

Whether in an engine with a carburetor like this one or in a newer-technology fuel-injected engine, the manifold's tubes, called intake runners, feed the fuel-and-air mixture to the engine's cylinder heads.

The manifold is made from long blocks of extruded aluminum.

First, a computer-guided saw cuts each block to the required length.

Metal cutting metal produces a lot of friction-generated heat.

A steady stream of water-based coolant and lubricant prevents the saw blade from overheating and breaking down.

A computer-guided machine shapes the block from multiple angles, transforming it into the rough form of one of the manifold's two sides, called banks.

Later, this bank, which has four ports for runners, will be mated with the opposing bank, which has another four ports for runners.

The machine now shapes the inside of the runner ports, which are curved and tapered in a very specific way.

The banks come off the machine with some rough edges.

A machinist smoothes them out with a handheld grinder, a process called deburring.

Once the banks are finished, they go onto a flow-testing machine.

It measures the airflow in cubic feet per minute in each port.

To achieve maximum efficiency, each port must have the same amount of air moving through it at the same speed.

The runners have been machined separately.

A quality-control technician runs a file over the runners and the banks to check for any imperfections.

He then cleans all the surfaces with solvent.

The aluminum must be free of any oils or other contaminates prior to welding.

It's finally time to mate the two banks.

Workers mount them on a mock-up engine in order to get the fit exact, then temporarily bolt them down to hold their position.

Now a welder takes over.

Using a high-precision welding machine, he first tacks the banks to each other in a few spots to secure the positioning.

Then he fully welds them together.

Next, he attaches the intake runners to the ports.

A light tap to make the tongue-and-groove connection, followed by welding along their perimeter.

A manifold has one intake runner for each cylinder of the engine.

This one's designed for a fuel-injected v-8 engine.

Therefore, it has eight runners.

Once all the runners are welded on, he closes up the manifold with front, back, and top panels.

He welds these parts, as well.

Next, workers mount the fuel rails, which send fuel to the injectors.

The injectors go on afterward.

This is a high-performance manifold with a built-in nitrous oxide system.

These are the stainless-steel feed lines for it.

Nitrous oxide is a compressed gas that's high in oxygen.

It allows more fuel to be injected, which increases combustion pressure, giving the engine up to an additional 500 horsepower.

They mount the throttle body through which air enters the engine.

The pivoting brass blade in the center is an air-metering device.

The deeper the driver pushes the gas pedal, the more it opens, letting in more air.

The injectors simultaneously shoot in more fuel.

The result-- more power.

This sophisticated testing machine checks for leaks and measures several factors, such as the nitrous oxide flow.

While the function is the same, the shape and configuration of intake manifolds vary according to the type of engine in order to optimize performance and fuel efficiency.

First conceived in 1920s america, the motorcycle jacket is designed for the open road.

Made of tough leather with an off-center zipper that creates a seal, this jacket is the ultimate windbreaker.

It also protects the biker from scrapes and cuts in the event of a high-speed fall.

The motorcycle jacket evolved from other wind-resistant garments, like world war i aviator jackets and duster coats.

Styles come and go, but the classic biker jacket has ruled the road for decades.

They make it from heavy steer hide.

A worker inspects the skins for flaws and selects the best.

He also pairs up skins of similar hues and textures so all the sections of the jacket will match up.

He wipes oils from the hides with a piece of sheepskin, then stacks the hides in bundles of 6 to 10.

It's now time to select a pattern.

In this case, it's a men's medium.

There are about 50 pieces in one motorcycle-jacket pattern.

Cutting the leather takes an experienced hand and a keen eye.

The cutter works around any imperfections and chooses the stronger sections of the hide for the parts of the jacket that will be subject to the greatest wear.

It's a skill that takes about two years to master.

They punch out small components like pocket flaps and trim with a die, producing stacks of parts in one swoop.

They call it clicking out the parts.

These parts of the jacket don't vary in size, so different-sized patterns aren't needed.

The next worker lowers a hydraulic blade to cut pocket slits in several jacket front panels.

This is called the pocket chop.

Working from the reverse side of the panel, workers fold back the edges of the pocket slits and glue them down with strong industrial adhesive.

They gently hammer the glued border to improve the adhesion.

A few taps to both the back and the front of the pocket slit seals this job.

A seamstress sews a zipper onto a pocket.

Then she stitches the pocket into the panel slit.

This is the right panel, and this side of the jacket gets three pockets.

Biker jackets usually have lots of pockets because motorcycles don't have much storage capacity.

She pieces together the rest of the leather shell.

In the meantime, another crew rolls out quilted fabric for the liners.

They align it with other piece of the material that have been cut to length.

They place a weight on one end and move to the other to cut the material to precisely the same length as the pieces underneath.

Once they've accumulated numerous layers, they're ready for the pattern.

This time, it's a big sheet of paper printed with the pattern markers.

The pattern designs have been precisely configured on a computer to minimize fabric waste.

Using sharp vertical blades, they cut along the pattern lines, slicing through the quilted stack.

In a matter of minutes, they produce liner components for a couple dozen motorcycle jackets.

In the sewing department, the seamstress pieces together the quilted lining and stitches on the label.

She mates it to the now-completed leather shell, sewing from the inside so the stitches won't be visible.

With the job done and the off-center front zipper installed, the next worker turns the motorcycle jacket right-side out.

She pulls the seams of the jacket over a pointed metal rod.

This gets rid of any puckers and rounds out the seams.

Using a hydraulic device, another worker installs button-down snaps on the collar.

This will keep it from flapping around and distracting the biker.

A worker drives the prongs of a metal star into a piece of shoulder trim and bends them back.

This and other metallic touches adds a bit of flash to the jacket.

Made famous on the big screen by hollywood tough guys like marlon brando and james dean decades ago, the motorcycle jacket is still riding a wave of popularity.

Shovels and spades are indispensable tools when it comes to digging into the ground or transferring materials such as soil, sand, or gravel.

Lower-quality shovels' and spades' heads are stamped out of steel, whereas the best-quality ones are constructed from one piece of forged steel.

The head of a shovel or spade consists of a blade and a socket.

The socket fits over the shaft-- the part you hold.

These heads are forged from a single piece of steel, far stronger than those made of a welded-together socket and blade.

It all begins in the factory's foundry, where workers heat planks of steel about 8/10 of an inch thick to 2,000 degrees fahrenheit.

A massive press then cuts the planks into t-shaped pieces.

Each piece will become a head.

The vertical part of the "t" will form the socket...

The horizontal part, the blade.

The next press, with a couple of strikes, forms a neck-- the starting point for the socket.

Next, they spread out the neck between giant rollers, flattening and thinning the steel in the process.

Then they lay the neck in a stamping press that chops off the excess metal.

Next, they finalize the socket shape.

The first strike simultaneously curves it into a "u" shape and punches a rivet hole.

The next turns the ends around to form a rudimentary circle.

Then repeated strikes round out the circle, perfecting it.

Work begins on the other end of the "t" piece.

Rollers spread and flatten it, forming the rough shape of the blade.

A press stamps the precise contour.

Another then forms the required angles, finalizing the blade shape.

The repeated heating, reheating, and forming renders the steel brittle and weak.

That's why the next step, heat treatment, is critical.

First, they heat the head to 2,000 degrees fahrenheit at a very specific rate over a period of 90 seconds.

Then they submerge it in cool water for about 30 seconds.

This heating and quenching, as it's called, rearranges the molecular composition, strengthening the steel.

Next step, a coat of paint-- either clear, allowing the natural color to show through, or traditional green or gray.

They bake the paint for about five minutes to make it ultra-durable.

The shovel shaft is made of ash, a particularly strong type of wood.

They take a cylindrical piece and saw an 8-inch slot down one end, then widen the slot a bit.

They sit that slotted end in boiling water for three minutes to soften up the wood just enough to make it pliable.

Then they line it up with a horseshoe-shaped clamp.

A hydraulic ram then pushes the shaft forward, spreading each side of the slot around the clamp.

They move the shaft in this clamp state to a slightly heated chamber for a couple of days to dry out, after which, the wood assumes this shape permanently.

After putting a rivet through the bottom of the split to prevent further splitting down the length of the shaft, they sand the wood to smooth it out, taper the end that will go into the socket, mount a riveted handle grip, then do a final overall sanding.

The shaft now goes to the assembly shop, where they put it in a press and mate it with the head.

Then they secure it with a rivet through the rivet hole in the socket.

The next operation is called linishing.

Using a coarse sanding belt, they wear down the wood where it meets the metal, making a smooth transition between the two materials.

At the same time, they smooth down the edge of the rivet.

Next, they dip the shaft in wood stain.

This brings out the beautiful grain.

Once the stain dries, they apply a protective coat of varnish.

Other models have a metal handle on a wooden shaft or a nylon handle on a fiberglass shaft.

Different designs with the same purpose-- to get the job done.


Eyeglass Lenses
Granite
Potato Chips
Microprocessors

Today on "how it's made"...

Eyeglass lenses...

Granite...

Potato chips...

And computer microprocessors.

Remember when wearing coke-bottle eyeglasses was your one-way ticket to being the class nerd?

Well, today, even if you need a heavy-duty prescription, you can wear fashionable eyeglasses with thin and lightweight plastic lenses.

Eyeglass lenses start out as large plastic disks.

The first step is to place a protective film over the convex side so it won't get damaged while the lab works on the concave side.

With a scanner, they retrieve the customer's prescription from the central computer.

Then they program those measurements into the tray holding the disks.

Next, they heat up a mixture of seven metals to 122 degrees.

Any hotter would melt the disk on contact.

Out of that molten metal, they mold an attachment.

This allows the disk to be mounted on a machine for tooling.

At this point, robots take over.

When the tray with the disks arrives, the milling machine reads the prescription information, then reshapes the plastic accordingly.

First, it thins the disk and shaves it down to a smaller diameter.

Then it creates the required curvature.

The disk is now a lens.

But you can still see the concentric circles left by the tooling, and the surface of the lens is rough, so they polish it using abrasive paper under water heated precisely to 66 degrees.

The water temperature must be constant, or else the lens will become deformed.

Now that the lens is perfectly shaped, they remove the metal attachment...

Then peel off the protective film on the other side.

Using a machine called a lensometer, they make sure the prescription is accurate.

Next, the lenses go through an automated 15-stage chemical cleaning then are coated with varnish to make them scratch-resistant.

They go into an oven for three hours until the varnish cures.

Next comes the antireflection treatment.

This will increase the lenses' transparency, allowing in more light.

The lenses go into a chamber.

They add different powdered chemicals, such as silicium oxide, titanium oxide, and zirconium oxide.

They close the door, then pump all the air out of the chamber.

Using a high-powered electron beam, they heat the chemicals to the boiling point.

The powders transform from solid to gas, coating the lenses in the process.

It's finally time to fit the lenses to the frame.

They position a suction cup on the lenses to hold them in place during the fitting.

An automated machine traces the shape of the frame...

Then cuts the lenses to that shape.

With regular frames, the lenses simply pop in.

To attach ultralight metal frames, they drill holes right through the lenses.

From plastic disk to the latest in eyewear in just three days.

What do you get when you cross a spider with a goat?

A silk fiber stronger than steel, yet more elastic than nylon.

Researchers implanted a spider's web-spinning genes into a goat's mammary glands.

The result-- goat's milk with silk proteins, the raw material for a fabric strong enough to be bulletproof.

Granite is one of the strongest stones on earth, and it's the darling of decor these days.

As an indoor/outdoor building material, it's timeless, elegant, and resistant to acid rain.

Nature's granite factory lies many miles beneath the earth's surface.

Boiling molten rock called "magma" builds up pressure from the intense heat and rises through cracks and crevices in the earth's crust.

As it rises, it slowly cools and solidifies into granite.

Most granite is buried under sedimentary rock, which makes up most of the earth's surface.

The challenge is to extract as much granite from the quarry as possible while losing as little as possible to damage from the extraction process.

They start by outlining a section of rock wall up to 99 feet long by 23 feet wide.

They use a gas flame to burn long, narrow channels to free up the sides.

Then they drill holes 23 feet deep along the back and bottom.

They feed explosive cables into the holes.

Then they set it off.

The explosion detaches the section.

Then they use a combination of drills, steel pegs, plates, and wedges to cut it down and cut it down further until they have rough blocks measuring 10 feet long by 5 feet wide and 5 feet deep, a size the granite factory can handle.

The blocks may be small, but each one weighs more than 45,000 pounds.

At the factory, the first cut is called "slabbing".

They use this type of saw to cut slabs more than 2 inches thick.

The blade's metal segments contain synthetic diamond particles, which create the friction needed to make the cut.

Water keeps the saw from overheating.

It's a slow process.

The saw cuts less than 22 square feet of granite per hour.

They use a gang saw to cut slabs thinner than 5 centimeters to make kitchen countertops, for example.

This saw has steel blades-- tense enough not to bend under the pressure of cutting and calibrated to cut as straight as possible.

The gang saw cuts at a rate of about 86 square feet per hour.

It takes three entire days to cut through the rough block.

Once a slab is cut, it goes for polishing.

This is what will bring out the beauty of the stone.

The polishing line has 19 heads, each of which has six bricks that polish by abrasion, like sandpaper.

The brick grains get progressively finer as you go down the line.

The polishing line processes about a 10 square feet of granite per minute.

For a high-gloss finish, a slab goes through all 19 heads.

For a semigloss finish, it goes through just the first 10 heads.

For a rough finish, slabs skip the polishing line altogether and instead go through a process called "flaming".

With a stream of water to keep the slab from cracking under the heat, they run a propane flame at 2,000 degrees fahrenheit across the surface.

This intense heat makes the quartz inside the granite explode, creating a rough surface.

They often use this technique for nonslip flooring.

After the finish, the last step is to cut the slabs to specifications.

Granite is composed of various minerals.

They're interlocked like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, giving the stone its trademark speckles and its remarkable strength.

They say chips were invented when someone sent back his fried potatoes, complaining the slices were too thick.

The insulted chef cut them paper-thin and fried them to a crisp.

So pride, not necessity, was the mother of this invention.

Potato chips have since become the consummate snack food.

They have to be made with fresh potatoes, no more than 24 hours old, otherwise the chips will have black spots.

After a brushing machine removes the dirt, the potatoes travel along a water canal to the peeler.

They tumble around and around against the peeler's abrasive rollers until the skins come off.

This machine can peel 12,000 pounds of potatoes per hour.

Next stop-- a machine that separates the potatoes by size.

The small ones fall below to be rinsed.

The larger ones stay on top to be cut.

Then they fall down to the rinser, too.

Next, the potatoes go through slicers.

The slicers' blades are adjustable.

They can be set to different thicknesses or to different shapes, to slice ripple chips, for example.

The centrifugal force created by the spinning throws the potatoes against the sharp blades.

To make regular chips, they cut slices 6/100 of an inch thick.

An average potato will yield about 36 chips.

Finally, it's time to wash the potato slices.

They spin inside a giant barrel of cold, fresh water for about a minute.

Then, like at the car wash, the slices pass under an air blower to dry up the excess water.

The fryer contains canola oil boiling at 375 degrees fahrenheit.

It takes just 3 minutes to fry the potato slices into potato chips.

As the chips exit the fryer on the conveyor belt, the excess oil drips off.

Next, a shower of salt.

The chips then move on to the sorter.

An electronic camera identifies any chips that have brown spots or other defects.

The camera then triggers the thin pipe directly above that bum chip to blow it off the conveyor belt with air pressure.

Elsewhere in the factory, they're making another popular snack food, cheese puffs.

They take corn flour and mix it with water.

An extrusion machine forces the mixture through round holes.

When the snakelike streams come out the other end, a knife cuts them into pieces.

The heat in the machine then causes the flour in those pieces to explode, creating slightly curled puffs.

They spray those puffs with a mixture of canola oil, powdered cheese, and natural colorings.

A revolving drum mixes it all together.

Back in the chips department, they spray the potato chips with powdered seasonings, which simulate flavors such as barbecue or salt and vinegar.

The next machine separates and weighs the portions to be packaged.

The chips drop into bags that are then heat-sealed.

It's taken about 15 minutes to go from raw potato to potato chips-- a lot longer than it takes to eat them.

A microprocessor is the brain inside a computer.

Its made up of a microchip on an electronic card.

Preparing the chip to be installed on the card is a delicate and precise operation.

Scientists built the first computer in 1937, but it could only do algebra.

The first general-purpose computer, in 1946, was the size of 20 refrigerators.

During the 1950s, transistors replaced bulky vacuum tubes, then integrated circuits replaced transistors.

But the biggest breakthrough came in 1971 with the microprocessor-- all the components on one miniscule chip.

That's what made the personal computer possible.

They start with a ceramic square called a substrate.

This will carry the microchip.

A machine coats the substrate surface with flux, a chemical that makes it sticky.

This will hold the microchip in place until it's soldered.

The factory receives the microchips ready-made, with all the circuits in place.

They place a microchip on each substrate.

An infrared light guides the machine to place the chip in precisely the right spot.

They pull a sample from the production line to further verify the positioning with a microscope.

Next stop-- a soldering oven at 689 degrees.

The heat melts tiny beads of tin positioned on the chip, binding it to the substrate.

Next, they prepare to solder an aluminum cap over each microchip.

The cap will have two functions-- to protect the chip and to dissipate the heat that the chip generates.

A robotic arm picks up four caps at a time and positions them over the microchips.

They go into a soldering oven at 302 degrees for about an hour.

The next step is to create the electrical connections that will later link the microprocessor to the computer's electronic card.

They start with tiny cylindrical pieces of tin, called "columns".

Tin conducts electricity.

A giant suctioning sieve vibrates the columns until they fall through the holes.

This lines them up vertically so that they can be attached to the substrate.

A machine spreads a thick adhesive paste, then attaches the vertical columns in it from underneath.

A robotic arm positions the chip-carrying substrate onto the pasted columns.

The result is a microchip with 1,000 connections.

For even more connections, they use tin balls instead of columns because balls are sturdier and more reliable.

They, too, go through a suctioning sieve, only instead of paste, they're stuck on with flux, that sticky chemical used earlier to position the microchip onto the substrate.

The finished microchip unit goes into a bath of water and solvents to remove any excess flux or other residues.

Last stop--  quality control testing, up to 12 hours in an oven heated to 284 degrees.

From here, the microprocessor unit goes to another factory where it's soldered onto an electronic card, which then goes into a computer.


Garden Forks
English Toffee
Paint Chip Cards
Bundt Pans

The garden fork was once a very prized possession-- so coveted, it was often the object of theft.

That was centuries ago, when a family's very survival depended on the crops they grew.

Today, of course, food is mass produced and sold in supermarkets.

But the garden fork still rules in the backyard garden.

There are many versions of the trusty garden fork.

Use one to work the garden, and you'll reap the benefits.

At this factory, they've been forging garden forks from a solid-steel slab for over two centuries.

Using a 660-ton punch press, they cut two basic fork shapes from this hot and malleable slab.

The tines or prongs for this particular kind of fork are shorter than most because these are border forks used for turning soil rather than digging deep.

With the basic shape now established, it's back into the furnace to re-soften the stem.

A worker repeatedly feeds it to rollers to thin and widen it substantially.

He strikes the stem with another punch press.

This one hit trims it while cutting holes for attaching the wood shaft.

The trimmings will be remelted and recycled into new forks.

The next press slams the steel stem into a cylindrical die to force it into the basic shape of a socket.

He slides the socket onto a coned form and strikes it repeatedly to refine the socket shape.

This sizes it for a wooden shaft.

They take an entirely different approach when making digging forks because of their longer curved tines.

After forging a kind of spider shape, a worker bends a prong around a post to orient it for shaping.

This two-person team works in tandem.

One fires the spider and bends the prongs.

The other worker inserts the prong in the grooves of two revolving dies.

This rolls the tine within the confines of the grooves to stretch it long and thin.

With two tines now shaped, his partner bends them out of the way so he can work on the third tine.

Rolling takes 18 months of training to perfect.

If the tine isn't precisely aligned with the grooves, the equipment could seize and throw the worker backwards.

Not only could he be injured, but the fork and the dies would most certainly be wrecked.

With a fourth tine now stretched long and thin like the rest, the other member of the team twists all four tines around the post again, this time to bend them all in the same general direction.

After about 10 minutes of work, they have the rough shape of a digging fork.

They then form the socket and crop the tines.

Fired to a supple state again, a worker drives tooling between the tines to straighten them and even the gaps between them.

He rests the fork socket against a steel slope and lowers a ram.

It slams into the tines to push the socket against the slope and bend it upward-- a more effective angle for digging.

He inserts the tines in a press one at a time.

The press closes around each tine to taper the corners.

A ram now pounds the base of the tines against a swooped anvil to give it a gentle curve.

He plunges the hot fork into cool water, and the shock hardens the steel.

The next worker grinds off any rough bits from the sides and sharpens the edges.

He narrows the tips to a point, and this will enable the fork to pierce solid earth.

A worker repairs any irregularities with his hammer.

Here you can see the difference this makes.

The prongs on the left are out of alignment.

The ones on the right have been fixed.

They apply an electrostatic charge onto the forks to attract a green powder spray.

Once cured, it forms a colorful skin that resists corrosion.

Now out of the curing oven, a worker clamps the ends to lock the fork in place while he inserts the ash wood shaft into the socket.

He secures it with rivets.

Using a belt sander, he blends the wood to the metal in a process known as linishing.

He also sands the rivets to make them flush to the surface of the metal.

The bottom fork is the one that has been linished.

He dips the wood shaft and handle in varnish, giving it a glossy stain that enhances the grain.

This garden fork is now done.

It won't look shiny and new for long, because things are sure to get dirty very soon.

Toffee is a type of candy traditionally made of caramelized sugar or molasses and butter.

There are many different varieties-- soft and chewy or hard and brittle.

English toffee, which is actually an american style of toffee, is very buttery and typically has a topping of chopped nuts.

This english toffee is completely free of dairy ingredients and is kosher certified, making it ideal for toffee lovers with certain dietary restrictions.

The workers at this small american confectioner make this special recipe entirely by hand one small batch at a time.

They start by combining water and sugar.

They heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves.

Then they add a formula so top-secret they won't let us see it.

All they'll reveal is that it contains a combination of vegetable oils and shortening which are non-dairy substitutes for butter and beta carotene to give the toffee that familiar golden color.

They add an emulsifier called lecithin to stabilize all these ingredients.

As soon as the mixture reaches the boiling point, they add salt.

This enhances the flavor and helps produce a rapid boil that continues for several hours until the mixture hits a top-secret target temperature.

By that point, most of the water has evaporated, producing sweet, thick, liquid toffee.

Now they open a hot-water valve that heats up a table, then carefully pour the toffee onto the surface.

The heat keeps the toffee pliable while they spread it out.

They spread it wider and wider until the toffee sheet is evenly thick.

They don't actually measure.

They just eyeball it, so the thickness varies somewhat.

But that lack of uniformity is part of the charm of handmade sweets.

They take a tool with multiple cutting wheels spaced about two inches apart.

They run it over the toffee sheet in one direction, then in the other.

Then they shut off the hot-water valve and open the cold-water one to cool the table surface and harden what are now toffee squares.

Within minutes, the squares are hard enough to be broken apart.

Next, the first of two ingredients that will turn this into english toffee-- molten semi-sweet chocolate.

Once this tempering machine heats it to the right consistency, a pump feeds it to the enrobing machine that coats the toffee squares in two stages, starting on the bottom.

The underside now coated, the squares move on to a refrigerated belt.

The cold quickly hardens the chocolate.

Then they move into the next station which covers the top with chocolate.

As the now fully-coated squares exit the enrobing machine, the belt vibrates, shaking off the excess chocolate.

The squares move on to another refrigerated belt and a worker manually sprinkles them with the second ingredient that makes this english toffee-- chopped pecans.

The squares travel through a cooling tunnel for several minutes to set.

As they reach the end of the line, excess nuts drop off and collect in a pan below, ready for sprinkling onto new squares.

Some english toffee recipes call for almonds rather than pecans.

Whichever variety of nut, every recipe follows the same structure.

Layering sweet and crunchy toffee, smooth and creamy chocolate, and coarsely chopped nuts-- three different textures, tastes, and sensations brought together in a single confection.

And just like other decadently delicious desserts, english toffee is heaven to anyone with a serious sweet tooth.

Trying to decide on a paint color?

Each card is a small sample of related shades, allowing you to view the actual hues without prying off the lids of paint cans.

With thousands of shades to choose from, how do they get it all down on paper?

Whether you're looking for a brilliant blue or a marvelous mauve, careful scrutiny of paint chip cards can help you get it right before the paint hits the wall.

Highly concentrated colorants stored in tanks will be used to reproduce paint colors in lacquer similar to the kind used in nail polish.

Lacquer produces better results on paper than actual paint.

They pipe the colorants to a dispenser.

At the same time, a bucket containing lacquer heads toward it.

The dispenser has many tentacles with nozzles at the end of each one and each tentacle is connected to one of the colorant tanks.

A computerized mechanism grabs the nozzles to dispense different colorants following a specific paint-color formula.

The bucket sits on a scale and the weight is constantly monitored by the computer to confirm that exact amounts are being added.

A blender mixes the colorants in the lacquer.

The mixing speed and time have been preset to avoid over or under mixing.

And now for the color test.

A technician pulls a bit of the lacquer-based paint on a sheet of paper just under a steel bar.

Using that bar, he spreads the color evenly across the paper.

Then it's into a kind of moving convection oven to dry the color.

The technician compares the color and gloss to that of the standard.

He also does a computer analysis and sends the formula back for tweaking when necessary.

Once they perfect the hue and gloss, production is ready to roll.

A worker pours the approved lacquer-based paints into cylindrical tanks above the coating machine.

There are over two dozen of these tanks because they'll be putting that many colors on paper in one production run.

He connects plastic tubing to the tanks to narrow the flow and aim it at the die block below.

He activates the machine and adjusts the tension of the paper as it moves forward.

Lacquer flows into a die, coating the paper with an endless rainbow of color.

A bar overhead spreads the lacquer evenly without actually touching the paper.

The striped paper then travels through an oven.

The solvents evaporate, leaving a dried lacquer skin on the paper.

If regular paint had been used, the paper would have absorbed it and ended up wavy.

But with the lacquer paint, it remains flat.

Rotary blades cut the coated paper into sheets sized to fit printing machinery down the line.

They land in a neat stack.

Using a transparent template, the next worker measures the width of each stripe.

He then confirms that the colors are in the correct order by checking each stripe against the approved proofs.

He checks the gloss with a glossmeter.

It aims light on an angle and registers the reflection to confirm that the gloss is consistent.

With the okay from the tester, the entire production run receives the go-ahead.

The press operator stacks them facedown for loading into the printer.

A feeder serves up the striped sheets to the printing line one at a time.

It's a 4-station printing press.

Each cylinder is equipped with an ink of a different color to stand out against the various paint-card stripes.

They print the paint color names and numbers on both sides.

They also apply varnish to the back of the sheets so the paint chip cards won't stick to one another when stacked.

Named and numbered, the color stripes are now identifiable.

The sheets go under a guillotine blade which slices them into paint chip cards.

Powered by hydraulics and super sharp, the blade cuts through hundreds of paper sheets like butter.

They produce 3 1/2 million paint chip cards a day at this factory.

With so many options, the cards are stacked against a quick decision.

A bundt pan is for baking a dense, ring-shaped cake called a bundt.

It typically has a fluted or a swirl design.

It originated in europe hundreds of years ago and quite possibly gets its name from the german bundkuchen-- "kuchen" meaning "cake" and "bund" meaning "a gathering of people".

Bundt pans were originally ceramic, which is fragile, or cast iron, which is heavy.

Today's version is typically made of cast aluminum-- unbreakable and infinitely lighter.

It also has a nonstick coating.

At the factory, they begin the production process by melting ingots of recycled aluminum.

The furnace heats the ingots to 1,300-degrees fahrenheit, at which point, they liquify in about a minute.

From the melting furnace, workers transfer the molten aluminum to a holding furnace which keeps it in a liquid state until casting.

The casting process is entirely automated.

A ladle descends into the holding furnace and scoops up just over two pounds of aluminum, enough to make one bundt pan.

The ladle then pours the molten metal into a sleeve which a high-speed ram immediately pushes into a steel bundt-pan mold.

The pressure and speed combined shoot the molten aluminum into every nook and cranny of the mold cavity.

As the hot aluminum hits the cooler mold, it solidifies in about 10 seconds, then the two halves of the mold automatically separate and a robotic arm extracts the cast pan.

Between castings, a robot cleans the mold with a blast of air, water, and lubricant.

This removes any aluminum residue, leaving the mold surface pristine.

This is critical, because even a tiny speck of dust left behind would mar the next casting.

As each pan comes off the machine, workers inspect it for any casting flaws.

When it comes time to produce a different style bundt pan, like this one with six mini-cake forms, they simply mount the corresponding mold onto the casting machine.

As the machine fills the mold under pressure, some aluminum oozes out between the two halves of the mold.

Now a worker cuts off that excess with a single strike of a trim press.

The scrap pieces go back into the furnace to be remelted.

Next, a computer-guided router working two pans at a time, smoothes the rough edges.

Then it refines the handle slots, finalizing the shape.

The aluminum surface must be pristine for the nonstick coating to adhere properly, so the pans now go through an industrial washing machine-- one wash and three rinse cycles, and then, before exiting, a drying cycle.

Workers put the pans upside down on fixtures which travel down the exterior coasting line.

As the pan spins by, spray guns apply a silicone-based decorative coating to the outside surface.

The pans then travel through an oven for 15 minutes to cure the coating.

Then the workers flip the pans right-side up and place them on fixtures, which spin them through another spray line.

This time, to coat the inside.

The interior coating is a food-safe silicone-polyester material designed to release the cake easily from the pan.

It's similar to a nonstick coating on a fry pan, the difference being that the chemical composition is designed to prevent sugar, rather than protein, from sticking.

Again, the pans go through an oven for 15 minutes to cure the coating.

Once the finished pans exit the oven, workers inspect them thoroughly, checking for any flaws in the coatings.

From a practical perspective, a bundt pan's ringed shape has definite advantages over an ordinary baking pan.

The tube in the middle funnels heat to the center of the cake batter, helping it bake quicker and more thoroughly.

From a decorative perspective, when you compare an ordinary pan to an elegant bundt, the latter certainly takes the cake.