Pot metal

Toy road roller cast from zinc.

Pot metal (or monkey metal) is an alloy of low-melting point metals that manufacturers use to make fast, inexpensive castings. The term "pot metal" came about because of automobile factories' practice in the early 20th century of gathering up non-ferrous metal scraps from the manufacturing processes and melting them in one pot to form into cast products. Small amounts of iron often made it into the castings but never in significant quantity because too much iron would raise the melting point too high for simple casting operations.

In stained glass, "pot metal" or pot metal glass refers to glass coloured with metal oxides while it is molten (in a pot), as opposed to other methods of colouring glass in sheet form.[1]

  1. ^ "pot metal, n." Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 9 November 2020. Access behind paywall{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)