Billet clutch baskets are, well..... Fake?

[salty_monk]

The bead blasting could have been done to take away the surface stresses in the material... (I.e. microscopic hard edges) which would also improve the parts strength

It's definitely been blasted at some point. That's not a machine finish of any type.

 

[80GS850GBob]

In my 25yrs of making rivets, the wire is rolled round to it's shape and inherits a long straight grain {to an extent}...but all bets are off when one reforms it via the various blows it takes to get to the finished product. Stress relieving helps there.{heated up to relax the metal after it's been formed}

I agree about the billet slang...but you'll never hear of a handmade wooden table made from a billet of hardwood - lol - that term is generally reserved for the metal type crowds....as in "this piece was made from a chuck of billet" {whatever type it might've been}.

One of the truly neat things I've seen is powder casting....a dry powdered metal mixture is poured into a mold and pressed at high pressure {multi-ton}...if defective for some reason it can be ground back to powder. Then, if everything is ok on said part, it's ran thru heat treating to make for razor sharp edges as well as hard as heck. {Burgess Norton} I worked in a different plant across town though, but visited that one once and got to see it 1st hand. I worked in extrusion - 500/1000 ton vertical presses and a short hop on the 6 die National 750C former {wrist pins and tappets}.