The Illustrious History of Metal Fabrication

Observing the cities and technology around us, it is easy to see how one might think of metal fabrication as a recent innovation. The skyscrapers and advanced infrastructure we have around us are built using metals, whereas back in the day, wood and stone were more popular. But that doesn’t mean humankind only started metal fabricating in recent times. Indeed, there is long and storied history that explains our progression from more antiquated building materials to the materials used in the sleeker and more futuristic cityscapes we have today.

The most obvious example of historical metal fabrication is probably the art of blacksmithing.

But things are actually a lot more complex than that – there is evidence of copper mining and working, in other words: early metal fabricating, in the Fertile Crescent 8,700 years before the common era. This confirms that human beings have been interacting with metals ever since they discovered them, and have been using them to make products.

By the time of the Bronze Age, humans had learned how to combine metals to amplify their properties, melting them down and turning them into raw materials for important construction tools and components, but most importantly, into weapons. The usefulness of metals in constructing great cities and enabling great armies is a key reason why metals came to dominate human culture and establish themselves, more than any other material, as civilization-defining.

In terms of the technology used in this early form of metal fabricating, it wasn’t until the Renaissance that people stopped using primitive furnaces to liquefy steel to be molded into products. By the early 1500s, this had progressed into mills, which were capable of pressing metals to alter their thicknesses.

Of course, nothing influenced the trajectory of metal fabricating as much as the Industrial Revolution, which saw the first industrial plants produce metal plates and sheet metal en masse. In 1770, the hydraulic press was invented, and it all skyrockets from there.

Today, metal fabrication is a crucial industrial process on which many industries are reliant.

This is why Baseline Custom Fabricating continues to innovate, constantly pushing the boundaries of technology in order to provide better services to our customers.

Our recent acquisition of an Ermac Fiber Raptor laser cutting machine is going to help us do just that – considered faster and more effective than most of its counterparts, it is a speedy, high-tech beast of a machine that’s going to help us set new standards for metal fabricating and laser cutting. In the long run, we hope to be part of metal fabrication’s wonderful history, and we are going to do that by continuing to provide the best products and services we can.