Rolling (metalworking) in the context of "Texture (crystalline)"

In metallurgy, cold forming or cold working is any metalworking process in which metal is shaped below its recrystallization temperature, usually at the ambient temperature at or near room temperature. Such processes are contrasted with hot working techniques like hot rolling, forging, welding, etc. The same or similar terms are used in glassmaking for the equivalents; for example cut glass is made by "cold work", cutting or grinding a formed object.

Cold forming techniques are usually classified into four major groups: squeezing, bending, drawing, and shearing. They generally have the advantage of being simpler to carry out than hot working techniques.

Dross is a mass of solid impurities floating on a molten metal or dispersed in the metal, such as in wrought iron. It forms on the surface of low-melting-point metals such as tin, lead, zinc or aluminium or alloys by oxidation of the metal. For higher melting point metals and alloys such as steel and silver, oxidized impurities melt and float making them easy to pour off.

With wrought iron, hammering and later rolling remove some dross.With tin and lead the dross can be removed by adding sodium hydroxide pellets, which dissolve the oxides and form a slag. If floating, dross can also be skimmed off.

Drawing is a manufacturing process that uses tensile forces to elongate metal, glass, or plastic. As the material is drawn (pulled), it stretches and becomes thinner, achieving a desired shape and thickness. Drawing is classified into two types: sheet metal drawing and wire, bar, and tube drawing. Sheet metal drawing is defined as a plastic deformation over a curved axis. For wire, bar, and tube drawing, the starting stock is drawn through a die to reduce its diameter and increase its length. Drawing is usually performed at room temperature, thus classified as a cold working process; however, drawing may also be performed at higher temperatures to hot work large wires, rods, or hollow tubes in order to reduce forces.

Drawing differs from rolling in that pressure is not applied by the turning action of a mill but instead depends on force applied locally near the area of compression. This means the maximal drawing force is limited by the tensile strength of the material, a fact particularly evident when drawing thin wires.

The United States Steel Corporation is an American steel company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that maintains production facilities at several additional locations in the U.S. and Central Europe. The company produces and sells steel products, including flat-rolled and tubular products for customers in industries across automotive, construction, consumer, electrical, industrial equipment, distribution, and energy. Operations also include iron ore and coke production facilities. In 2025, U.S. Steel was acquired by Nippon Steel in a deal arranged with the United States government.

U.S. Steel ranked eighth among global steel producers in 2008 and 24th by 2022, remaining the second-largest in the U.S. behind Nucor. Renamed USX Corporation in 1986, it reverted to U.S. Steel in 2001 after spinning off its energy assets, including Marathon Oil. In December 2023, Nippon Steel announced a $14.9 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel, retaining its name and Pittsburgh headquarters. The deal faced opposition from the United Steelworkers, the Trump presidential campaign, and the Biden administration, which formally blocked it in January 2025. U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel sued the administration, claiming the block was unlawful. The acquisition was finalized on June 18, 2025, making U.S. Steel a subsidiary of Nippon Steel North America, with an oversight role for the federal government of the United States through a golden share.

In metallurgy, hot working refers to processes where metals are plastically deformed above their recrystallization temperature. Being above the recrystallization temperature allows the material to recrystallize during deformation. This is important because recrystallization keeps the materials from strain hardening, which ultimately keeps the yield strength and hardness low and ductility high. This contrasts with cold working.

Many kinds of working, including rolling, forging, extrusion, and drawing, can be done with hot metal.

Rolled homogeneous armour (RHA) is a type of vehicle armour made of a single steel composition hot-rolled to improve its material characteristics, as opposed to layered or cemented armour. Its first common application was in tanks. After World War II, it began to fall out of use on main battle tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles intended to see front-line combat as new anti-tank weapon technologies were developed which were capable of relatively easily penetrating rolled homogeneous armour plating even of significant thickness.

Today, the term is primarily used as a unit of measurement of the protection offered by armour on a vehicle (often composed of materials that may not actually contain steel, or even contain any metals) in equivalent millimetres of RHA, referring to the thickness of RHA that would provide the same protection. Typically, modern composite armour can provide the same amount of protection with much thinner and lighter construction than its protective equivalence in RHA. Likewise, the term is also used as a unit of measurement of penetration capability of armour-piercing weaponry, in terms of the millimetres of RHA that the weapon system can reliably penetrate.