Both of these were awesome! Maley has a waterjet and a laser cutter.
The laser cutter is a larger version of the one we have at RISD. The platen holds the stock that the laser works above, cutting through metal, wood, plastics, whatever.
They even let us raid the negative pieces trough, so we all got to take home some "gleaned" laser negative. I got a metal hummingbird.
The water jet uses an ultra fast stream of water containing garnet dust to cut at a slower pace.
Maley does government contracting work, which includes this product, Skydex. Navy ships and Humvees are custom outfitted in sheets of this rubber/plastic material, which was originally pattented by Nike, to soften soldier's impact against instrumentation. An overwhelming number of the injuries sustained by soldiers could have been lessened or completely avoided by cushioning the interiors with this material. Very, very cool.
All State Fabricators works primarily in Stainless Steel - purchasing something like 10 million pounds of it each year. They manufacture sinks, countertops, pretty much anything a person can dream up, out of stainless steel using laser cutting, bending machines and welders.
Because a lot of this work is cabinetry, All State also has a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) Router. Basically a mill that cuts 3d. We watched it work up this cabinet side panel, which will be used as a substrate for either a laminate or stainless steel, and eventually become the back portion of a cafeteria serving area.
I'm sad this is our last Building Materials field trip of the semester. Boo.
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