Hour 5

Intro to Engineering

Allen Sam

Research for our product's life cycle.

Firstly, trees are harvested by a tree cutting company. The wood is the taken to a sawing company and is cut into boards. The boards have to be seasoned to remove excess water in the wood. After, the wood boards are sent to a lumber company and are cut to certain sizes for consumers to buy. Furniture manufacturers, or the customers of the boards, buy them and create the table. After its initial service, the table can be disassembled to be used as fuel, chipboard, or reused in other furniture.  

For the steel in our coffee table, ore is first mined. Then, it goes into a blast furnace for heating and then converted to steel. Companies take this steel to produce plates, strips, bar sections, rails, pipes, and wire rods. These are use to make other products like bridges, vehicles, and phones. Products that have steel and become unusable are taken to steel recycling companies to extract metal scraps to be reused in steel-making. 

Plastic starts with creation and manufacturing of the plastic material. A company takes it and can mold it into a product. Consumers buy a lot of plastic products like this L bracket on our coffee table. Plastic is then either thrown away when its initial service is done or recycled to make more plastic material.

http://www.technologystudent.com/prddes1/lifewd1.html

http://steelstewardship.com/lifecycle/