August 2025 Volume 7

FORGING RESEARCH

FORGING EDUCATION Integrating Apprenticeship with Forging Fundamentals By Terry C. Lowe, PhD, Dr.h.c.

F orging metals and alloys remains a critically important manufacturing process for a wide range of products, from familiar items like tongs for your backyard patio summer barbecue to advanced, high-tech precision Waspaloy turbine discs for military jet engines. The knowledge and experience base for forging thrives within the forging industry, with some companies having histories of over 100 years of excellence shaping metal and alloys. But how do we prepare the next generation of plant floor personnel, engineers, and metallurgists for the forging industry? The answer encompasses a range of educational modalities. In this article, we examine one successful approach: integrating “apprenticeship” style learning with classroom teaching of metal forming fundamentals. While the science and technologies that underpin forging advance each year, at its core, forging remains a manufacturing practice informed by hands-on experience. Millennia of blacksmiths remind us that forging metals possesses all the attributes of a creative art. Master craftsmen and apprentices continue to learn traditional practices that have been passed down through generations of metalworkers. However, incorporating the theory, new knowledge of alloys, and evolving tools and equipment to enhance productivity, quality, and competitiveness is also essential. Today, the Forging Industry Association (FIA) and its Forging Industry Educational and Research Foundation (FIERF) offer a range of “apprentice-style” educational programs, including summer camps for children and training workshops for experienced practitioners. FIERF provides incentives for schools and colleges to establish Forging Clubs where students can practice the craft and trade of metal forging. FIA offers online training on forging fundamentals through its online Forging University. FIA’s pinnacle course offering, Theory and Applications of Forging and Die Design Course, provides a team of experts with diverse experience in forging to convey both practical and fundamental knowledge. College-level training is available at multiple campuses in the USA, including the sixty “magnet” campuses identified by FIERF that support forging education. At one of these campuses, the Colorado School of Mines, Forging and Forming courses are taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels to prepare students to work in the metal forging industry. In the most recent course, about 1/3rd of the 29 students expressed their interest in working in the forging industry. The students receive in-depth lectures on the science, mechanics, and metallurgy of shaping metals, but closely coupled with hands-on apprenticeship like training. During the first week of class, students begin blacksmithing in the foundry, then transition to open-die and closed-die forging of steel and aluminum in a forge shop, and finally apply finite element methods to simulate the actual forgings they create. The apprenticeship experiences are the students’ favorite and the pinnacle component of the courses. With the one-to-one student-teacher ratio, the sessions are highly interactive. Figure 1 shows forging course co-instructor Mason Weems and

teaching assistant Monty Ostlind preparing two students to operate a 200-ton hydraulic press for the first time.

Figure 1: Apprentice-style learning with two instructors (three, including the photographer) introducing a pair of students to operating a 200-ton hydraulic press. Starting the course with blacksmithing connects the students to the roots of metal shaping. Blacksmithing lets students “feel” the process of shaping metal. They work with a blacksmithing hammer to make a low-carbon steel bottle opener, before they learn any metal forming theory in class. They experience the force of hammering and feel the radiant heat of red-hot steel. They learn to estimate the temperature of a workpiece by its color as they remove it from the reheat furnace. They see the scale that forms each time they remove their workpiece from the open-air reheat furnace. Then, as a last step, they add a spiral twist to the bottle opener handle. Here, they experience the strong temperature dependence of the flow stress as the workpiece cools during twisting. It is one thing to learn from a graph in a textbook that the flow stress increases with decreasing temperature. It is an altogether different experience to feel the temperature dependence in your arms. The facial expression of student Isaak Keskula in Figure 2 tells all as he tries to add one last twist to his bottle opener. Another benefit of starting with blacksmithing is that students experience the sounds, smells, and the heat of forging. The importance of safety and protective equipment isn’t just talk – it's imperative and emphasized from the outset.

FIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2025 64