Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. Chapter 2 The Skills to Compete 27 on a solid machined piece of aluminum to get the grip and feel for the iPhone body, Figure 2-11. Today, iPhone enclosures are still machined from aluminum pieces in CNC machines. Many internal components like boards and switches are machined on CNCs as well. 2.2.6 Woodworking Machines for woodworking have been around for hundreds of years. Woodworkers are respected for their skilled use of hand tools to create decorative and intricate designs, but the woodworking industry is one of the most impacted by CNC technology. While there still is a high demand for handcrafted furniture, the advent of CNC routers and CNC lathes to cre- ate pieces of furniture has revolutionized furniture making. The mass production of repetitive pieces in drawers, cabinets, and doors has minimized cost and improved function. The ability to create complicated joints and joining features with high speed, accuracy, and repeatability has driven cost down significantly for the consumer, making sturdy, durable furniture affordable for all. Today, routers are attached to gantry-style machines and programmed to move in three axes of movement, virtually replicating the CNC mill, Figure 2-12. Edge finishing and complicated design work can now be done in seconds instead of hours. For example, Lou- isville Slugger, one of the leading baseball bat makers, can create 5,000 bats per day—or over 1.8 million per year—using CNC lathes. Much like the rest of the manufacturing world, the woodworking industry has experienced tremendous growth as a result of CNC technology and machinery. 2.2.7 Sheet Metal Fabrication Sheet metal fabrication is the process of cutting, form- ing, and bending pieces from flat sheet metal into a usable shape, Figure 2-13. This can be one of the most complicated processes in metal fabrication. Prints define the finished shape, but the part must be laid out flat, precision cut, and bent to match printed specifications. The bending process stretches the metal, depending on material thickness and type, and those deviations must be accounted for. The sheet metal industry has been most creative in building and designing CNC machinery. For many years, handheld plasma cutters were the standard method for cutting sheet metal. Alternatively, machines called shears could slice the sheet metal along layout lines. Both methods created lots of metal waste with variable accuracy, depending on the operator. With the implementation of CNC technology, sheet metal mama_mia/Shutterstock.com Figure 2-11. Solid-bodied aluminum phone structure. Azami Adiputera/Shutterstock.com Figure 2-12. Cabinetmaker using a CNC router to cut cabinet doors. zilber42/Shutterstock.com Figure 2-13. A brake press operator bending sheet metal forms.