Manufacturing Materials
All manufactured products are made from some sort of material. Similar to the geometric tolerance, the properties of the material of the final manufactured product are of utmost importance. Hence, those who are interested in manufacturing should be very concerned with material selection. An extremely wide variety of materials are available to the manufacturer today. The manufacturer must consider the properties of these materials with respect to the desired properties of the manufactured goods. Simultaneously, one must also consider manufacturing process. Although the properties of a material may be great, it may not be able to effectively, or economically, be processed into a useful form. Also, since the microscopic structure of materials is often changed through different manufacturing processes -dependent upon the process- variations in manufacturing technique may yield different results in the end product. Therefore, a constant feedback must exist between manufacturing process and materials optimization.