Die [dahy]

Die

[dahy]
Brücke, Die [Ger.,=the bridge], German expressionist art movement, lasting from 1905 to 1913. Influenced by the art of Jugendstil (the German equivalent of art nouveau), Van Gogh, and the primitive sculpture of Africa and the South Seas, the Brücke group developed an art of fervent emotionalism. Founded in Dresden by Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Heckel, the group invited Nolde and Pechstein to join in 1906 and Otto Müller in 1910. They lived and worked communally, periodically issuing portfolios of their graphic art, which at first bore a rather communal style. By 1911 most of them had gone to Berlin. In their exhibitions they displayed boldly colored portraits, landscapes, and city themes. Their expressionistic art was essentially a reaction against a perceived superficiality of impressionism and realism. The members fell out in 1913 over a statement of their aims formulated by Kirchner.

See catalog ed. by R. Heller (2009).

die, any of various devices used for drawing wire, and for blanking, bending, cutting, machine forging, and embossing. Dies used for striking, or stamping, coins and medals are cut in intaglio, one for the front, another for the back, of the coin. Such dies were used as early as c.800 B.C. in Greece. Diemaking, or diesinking, formerly entirely a hand process in which the graver (a cutting tool), riffler (a file), and chisel were employed, has been accelerated in modern times by the use of diemaking machines supplemented by hand finishing. A punch, or male die, is commonly made as the counterpart in relief of the original die, or matrix; both are preserved as models, and duplicates are made from them for working dies. Sheet metal or other material is blanked (cut) out, shaped, or embossed between the dies by power-operated levers or drop hammers, or by die-casting. The die used for drawing wire or extruding rods is made of hard metal with a hole or a series of progressively smaller holes through which the metal is forced. For making screws or threading pipe a hollow hard metal die with internal threading is used.

Industrial art of manufacturing stamping dies, plastics molds, and jigs and fixtures to be used in the mass production of solid objects. The making of dies for punch presses constitutes most of the work done in tool and die shops, and most such pressworking dies are used in the manufacture of sheet-metal parts such as the panels of an automobile body. Seealso machine tool.

Learn more about tool and die making with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Forming metal objects by injecting molten metal under pressure into dies or molds. An early and important use of the technique was in the Linotype machine (1884), but the mass-production automobile assembly line gave die casting its real impetus. Great precision is possible, and products range from tiny parts for sewing machines and automobiles to aluminum engine-block castings.

Learn more about die casting with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Tool or device for imparting a desired shape, form, or finish to a material. Examples include a perforated block through which metal or plastic is drawn or extruded, the hardened steel forms for producing the patterns on coins and medals by pressure, and the hollow molds into which metal or plastic is forced. Modern tools and dies can be traced to the work of Honoré Blanc at the Saint-Étienne armoury in France beginning in 1780. Blanc's techniques were adopted and enlarged in the U.S. by Eli Whitney and others, who used templates (tool-guiding patterns) and fixtures—the antecedents of today's tools and dies—to mass-produce firearms for the U.S. Army (see armoury practice). Today the demand for dies used in metal forming, die casting, and plastic molding is filled by tool- and die-making shops.

Learn more about die with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Die may refer to:Objects

See also

Search another word or see DIEon Dictionary | Thesaurus |Spanish
  • Please Login or Sign Up to use the Recent Searches feature