14 DAY TRIAL // For those of you wondering how Apple manages to achieve that one-of-a-kind design with its new Mac Pro, the process is called “impact extrusion,” and there are a bunch of videos up on YouTube that show you how it works.
As strange as it may sound, the cylindrical ebony shell of the new Mac Pro is not made of plastic but from metal. Aluminum, to be precise (arguably one of Jony Ive’s favorite materials).
Apple usually employs machining to carve out its computers’ shells out of entire blocks / slabs of aluminum but, for the Mac Pro, that process would result in a lot of wasted material and manufacturing time.
So what Apple does is take a round block of aluminum, put it inside a circular-shaped die and pound it hard using a piston that pushes out the material to the walls of that die, resulting in a hollow tube that has nowhere to go but upwards.
It doesn't make much sense when you read about it, but once you watch the video above, it all comes together. When you apply enough force, this metal behaves like dough.
According to Core77, “it [likely] goes through a CNC mill afterwards for the top cutout, the purty bevel, the connector cutouts and the nice finish.”