Machining and CNC, welding, casting and forging, sheet metal and injection molding, additive manufacturing, and the surface finishing and quality control that confirm a part actually meets print.
Design intent only becomes a real part once it passes through a manufacturing process, and every process in this module shapes metal or plastic by a genuinely different physical mechanism — cutting it away, melting and pouring it, deforming it under force, or building it up layer by layer. Choosing correctly between them, not defaulting to whichever process is most familiar, is what separates a design that is easy and cheap to produce from one that fights its own manufacturing route at every step.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why a crankshaft is forged rather than cast or machined from bar stock, why additive manufacturing wins on design freedom rather than per-part cost, and which non-destructive testing method actually applies to a given weld quality question — groundwork Project 4's production line and Project 3's industrial machine case studies both build directly on.