Cylindrical designs are typically turned on a lathe

Copper is easy to braze but difficult to weld. Its extreme ductility makes it both strong and flexible, a rare occurrence among metals. Yet copper does far more than conducting the power needed to heat our grills. It’s used in semiconductor manufacturing as an element of high-temperature superconducting, in glass-to-metal seals such as those needed for vacuum tubes, and has even been approved by the United States EPA for use in hospitals and public places as an antimicrobial surface. Because elemental copper exists in nature, people first started pounding it into coins and cutlery millennia ago. Today, it’s an ingredient in more than 570 different metallic alloys, of which cartridge brass is one. Tellurium copper, nickel copper, bronze, gunmetal, aluminum, and steel alloys—the list goes on. Copper can also be used for electrodes in electrical discharge machining (EDM), a technology often seen in injection molding and metal stamping. In the modern world, copper is indeed king.