Stainless steel

In metallurgy, stainless steel, also known as inox steel or inox from French "inoxydable", is a steel alloy with a minimum of 10.5%chromium content by mass.

Stainless steel does not readily corrode, rust or stain with water as ordinary steel does. However, it is not fully stain-proof in low-oxygen, high-salinity, or poor air-circulation environments. There are different grades and surface finishes of stainless steel to suit the environment the alloy must endure. Stainless steel is used where both the properties of steel and corrosion resistance are required.

Stainless steel differs from carbon steel by the amount of chromium present. Unprotected carbon steel rusts readily when exposed to air and moisture. This iron oxide film (the rust) is active and accelerates corrosion by forming more iron oxide; and, because of the greater volume of the iron oxide, this tends to flake and fall away. Stainless steels contain sufficient chromium to form a passive film of chromium oxide, which prevents further surface corrosion by blocking oxygen diffusion to the steel surface and blocks corrosion from spreading into the metal's internal structure. Passivation occurs only if the proportion of chromium is high enough and oxygen is present.

Steel

Steels are alloys of iron and other elements, primarily carbon, widely used in construction and other applications because of their high tensile strengths and low costs. Carbon, other elements, and inclusions within iron act as hardening agents that prevent the movement of dislocations that otherwise occur in the crystal lattices of iron atoms.

The carbon in typical steel alloys may contribute up to 2.1% of its weight. Varying the amount of alloying elements, their formation in the steel either as solute elements, or as precipitated phases, retards the movement of those dislocations that make iron comparatively ductile and weak, and thus controls qualities such as the hardness, ductility, and tensile strength of the resulting steel. Steel's strength compared to pure iron is only possible at the expense of ductility, of which iron has an excess.

Although steel had been produced in bloomery furnaces for thousands of years, steel's use expanded extensively after more efficient production methods were devised in the 17th century for blister steel and then crucible steel. With the invention of the Bessemer process in the mid-19th century, a new era of mass-produced steel began. This was followed by Siemens-Martin process and then Gilchrist-Thomas process that refined the quality of steel. With their introductions, mild steel replaced wrought iron.

How It's Made

How It's Made is a documentary television series that premiered on January 6, 2001 on the Discovery Channel (now known as Discovery Science) in Canada, and Science in the United States. The program is produced in the Canadian province of Quebec by Productions MAJ, Inc. and Productions MAJ 2. In the United Kingdom, it is transmitted on Discovery Channel, Quest, and DMAX.

Format

The show is a documentary showing how common, everyday items (including clothing and accessories like alligator handbags, foodstuffs like bubble gum, industrial products such as engines, musical instruments such as guitars, and sporting goods such as snowboards) are manufactured.

How It's Made is filmed without exploratory text to simplify overdubbing in different languages. For example, the show avoids showing a narrator or host onscreen, does not often have employees of featured companies speak on camera, and keeps human interaction with the manufacturing process to a bare minimum.

An off-screen narrator explains each process, often with humorous puns. Each half-hour show usually has three or four main segments, with each product getting a demonstration of approximately five minutes; exceptions are allowed in the allotted time for more complex products. Usually, every show has at least one product with a historic background note preceding it: Showing how and where the product originated, and what people used before it.

3D printing

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), refers to various processes used to synthesize a three-dimensional object. In 3D printing, successive layers of material are formed under computer control to create an object. These objects can be of almost any shape or geometry and are produced from a 3D model or other electronic data source. A 3D printer is a type of industrial robot.

Futurologists such as Jeremy Rifkin believe that 3D printing signals the beginning of a third industrial revolution, succeeding the production line assembly that dominated manufacturing starting in the late 19th century. Using the power of the Internet, it may eventually be possible to send a blueprint of any product to any place in the world to be replicated by a 3D printer with "elemental inks" capable of being combined into any material substance of any desired form.

3D printing in the term's original sense refers to processes that sequentially deposit material onto a powder bed with inkjet printer heads. More recently, the meaning of the term has expanded to encompass a wider variety of techniques such as extrusion and sintering-based processes. Technical standards generally use the term additive manufacturing for this broader sense.

Pebble (watch)

The Pebble Smartwatch is a smartwatch developed by Pebble Technology Corporation and released in 2013 that received the majority of its initial funding via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. The watch features a black and white low power LCD, a programmable CPU, memory, storage, Bluetooth, a vibrating alert motor, a magnetometer, an ambient light sensor, and an accelerometer; these extend its use into many roles including interacting with smartphone notifications, activity tracking, gaming, map display, and golf tracking.

The Pebble is compatible with Android and iOS devices. When connected to one of these devices via Bluetooth, it will vibrate and display text messages, emails, incoming calls, and notifications from social media accounts when they are received on the paired device. It can also act as a remote control for the phone, or for cameras such as the GoPro. As of February 2014, the Pebble app store had over 1,000 applications developed using Pebble's free software development kit (SDK).