It’s All About the Grains
When you talk to Benzing, he really stresses the importance of the orientation of a metal’s grains. Benzing told Gizmodo that if a final product is considered reliable, that means that the engineers and part designers are confident that it will behave as expected. In other words, a reliable product will produce the expected mechanical response when subjected to the forces and loading conditions for which that product is designed.
“If the metallic grains have a wide range of orientations that weren’t expected or the grains are all one orientation, but an unexpected orientation, the material will produce a mechanical response in the final product that the engineers don’t expect,” Benzing said.
He added that this will result in a metal that’s weaker than they anticipated, or which exhibits a behavior that is very wild, variable, and unpredictable. Such a part wouldn’t be reliable.
