The brass that ammunition cases are made from, and the brass most yellow brass things are made from — door hardware, plumbing fittings, instrument bells, jewelry stock. 70% copper, 30% zinc, soft enough to deep-draw into a tall thin shape without splitting, hard enough to keep that shape. The default workshop brass.
α-brass (70% Cu, 30% Zn) — single-phase FCC solid solution at all temperatures, so cold-formable to extreme reductions without intermediate annealing. The widest deep-drawing window of any brass alloy. Anneals at 425 °C; tensile 380 MPa hard temper, 315 MPa half-hard. Stress-corrosion susceptible ("season cracking") if cold-worked and exposed to ammonia — historical issue in tropical-stored military cartridges.
So accurate was Henry Maudslay's bench micrometer that it was nicknamed 'the Lord Chancellor,' as no one would dare have argued with it.
Principled BSDF defaults derived from the sphere metallic finish. Reasonable seed for Blender, Substance, Keyshot, Rhino — tune per material. Or grab the whole library at once: ForMaterials library →
# finish: metallic albedo #3b2a1a metallic 1.00 roughness 0.25 ior 1.45 transmission 0.00 clearcoat 0.00 sheen 0.00 anisotropic 0.00
{
"albedo": "#3b2a1a",
"metallic": 1.0,
"roughness": 0.25,
"ior": 1.45,
"transmission": 0.0,
"clearcoat": 0.0,
"sheen": 0.0,
"anisotropic": 0.0
}
# Blender 4.x — Principled BSDF
# Cartridge Brass (C26000) · finish: metallic
import bpy
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="mat_brass_c26000_cartridge")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
bsdf.inputs["Base Color"].default_value = (0.0437, 0.0232, 0.0103, 1.0)
bsdf.inputs["Metallic"].default_value = 1.000
bsdf.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 0.250
bsdf.inputs["IOR"].default_value = 1.450
bsdf.inputs["Transmission Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Coat Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Sheen Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Anisotropic"].default_value = 0.000
# KeyShot 11+ — lux Python API, Generic material
# Cartridge Brass (C26000) · finish: metallic
# Run from Window → Scripting Console
import lux
mat = lux.createMaterial(name="mat_brass_c26000_cartridge", materialType="Generic")
mat.setProperty("diffuse", (59, 42, 26)) # 8-bit sRGB
mat.setProperty("metallic", 1.000)
mat.setProperty("roughness", 0.250)
mat.setProperty("indexOfRefraction", 1.450)
mat.setProperty("transparency", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("coatingWeight", 0.000)
{
"_format": "Substance Designer / Painter \u2014 pbrMetalRough constants",
"_about": "Cartridge Brass (C26000) \u00b7 finish: metallic",
"baseColor": {
"r": 0.0437,
"g": 0.0232,
"b": 0.0103
},
"metallic": 1.0,
"roughness": 0.25,
"ior": 1.45,
"opacity": 1.0,
"anisotropyLevel": 0.0,
"_notes": "Channels listed are the standard Substance pbrMetalRough output. Drop into a Uniform Color node per channel, or as the constant input on a layered stack."
}{
"asset": {
"version": "2.0",
"generator": "ForMatter"
},
"materials": [
{
"name": "mat_brass_c26000_cartridge",
"pbrMetallicRoughness": {
"baseColorFactor": [
0.0437,
0.0232,
0.0103,
1.0
],
"metallicFactor": 1.0,
"roughnessFactor": 0.25
},
"extensions": {
"KHR_materials_ior": {
"ior": 1.45
}
}
}
]
}# USD Preview Surface — UsdShade.MaterialLook prim attributes
# Cartridge Brass (C26000) · finish: metallic
def Material "mat_brass_c26000_cartridge" {
token outputs:surface.connect = </mat_brass_c26000_cartridge/PreviewSurface.outputs:surface>
def Shader "PreviewSurface" {
uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.0437, 0.0232, 0.0103)
float inputs:metallic = 1.000
float inputs:roughness = 0.250
float inputs:ior = 1.450
float inputs:opacity = 1.000
float inputs:clearcoat = 0.000
token outputs:surface
}
}
Free-machining brass — the bench reference for non-ferrous turning and milling. Short curling chips evacuate cleanly. Easier on tools than aluminum (no welding).
Machinery's Handbook 30th ed., 'Copper Alloys Machining'; CDA Copper Development Association C26000 datasheet.
→ try this material in swarfASM Handbook Vol. 2; CDA Copper Development Association C26000 datasheet.
Oxidized brass with silver, concrete, 24k goldplate, and chromeplate; press-formed, cast, cold-joined. Accession 1993.47.2a,b.
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.
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