Material is pushed through a die — like toothpaste through a tube — and emerges as a continuous profile of whatever cross-section the die holds. The reason aluminum window frames, plastic gutters, pasta, and the entire 80/20 framing system exist.
Continuous forming process where a billet (metal) or melt (polymer) is forced through a die opening. Aluminum extrusion runs at ~450–500 °C; thermoplastic extrusion at 150–280 °C depending on polymer. Cross-section is constant along the length; complexity limited by die-design rules (uniform wall, no thin tongues).
A working library of materials and processes. Saves to this browser only — no account, no cloud.
Nothing saved yet. Open a material, process, or application and tap + project.
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, and applications, equal weight, citable everywhere. 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, 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. Voice blocks: Barthes, Yanagi, Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Lefteri verbatim. All cited.
Local to this browser. No cloud, no account, no telemetry.