Table of Contents

Major Classifications Of Basic Manufacturing Processes

What is “Manufacturing”?

The English word manufacture is several centuries old. The term manufacture comes from two Latin words, manus (hand) and factus (make). As per oxford English dictionary manufacture refers “to make or produce goods in large quantities, using machinery”.

Working definition of manufacturing

There are two types of working definitions available for manufacturing: as a technical process and as an economic process.

Technologically: Manufacturing is the application of physical and chemical processes to alter the geometry, properties and or appearance of a given starting material to make parts or product.

Economically: Manufacturing is the transformation of materials into items of greater value by means of one or more process and or assembly operation.

Classification of manufacturing processes

Manufacturing processes can be classified as processing operation and assembly operation.

In processing operation the work material is transformed from one state to other advanced state.Through this operation value is added to the work material by changing the geometry; shape properties, appearance etc. of the starting work material. Usually processing operations are performed on individual component. But in some cases like aerospace industry, the processing operations are performed on assembled items also.

In assembly operation two or more components are joined to create a new entity. The new entity is called assembly, subassembly based on its state in the product. If the entity is an intermediate state of the product, it is called subassembly. Some other terms are also referred based on the joining process. The assembly created by welding operation is called weld met.

Manufacturing Processes Classification

There are six basic / fundamental classifications of manufacturing processes.

1. Metal casting or Molding: expendable mold and permanent mold

2. Metal Forming and Shearing: rolling, forging, extrusion, drawing, sheet forming, powder metallurgy

3. Material Removal Processes / Machining Processes: turning, boring, drilling, milling, planing, shaping, broaching, grinding, ultrasonic machining, chemical machining, electrical discharge machining (EDM), Abrasive flow machining (AFM), abrasive jet machining (AJM), electrochemical machining, high-energy beam machining, laser beam machining (LBM) etc.

4. Joining: welding, brazing, soldering, diffusion bonding, adhesive bonding, mechanical joining, plasma arc, plasma MIG, projection welding, ultrasonic, electron beam welding, laser welding etc.

5. Finishing (painting, anti-corrosion coatings, etc.)

6. Rapid Manufacturing: stereo-lithography, selective laser sintering, fused deposition modeling, three dimensional printing, laminated object manufacturing, laser engineered net shaping