The November issue of the National Association of Manufacturers’ monthly publication, Member Focus, has just been posted online with reports on the 2010 elections, the lame-duck session of Congress, and top policy issues including taxes and trade.

There’s explosive coverage, or rather, coverage of explosion welding in the feature, “Cool Stuff Being Made,” highlighting the manufacturing processes used by the Colorado-based manufacturer, Dynamic Materials Corp.

As Member Focus reports:

Based in Boulder, Co., Dynamic Materials Corporation is the world’s leading provider of explosion-welded clad metal plates. In the late 1960s, Dynamic Materials started an explosion metal forming business that shaped blank sheets of metal alloys into complex three-dimensional parts for aerospace equipment manufacturers.

Today, its products are typically used in industrial capital projects in a variety of industries, including oil and gas, petrochemicals, alternative energy, hydrometallurgy, aluminum production, shipbuilding, power generation and industrial refrigeration, among others.

In this month’s “Cool Stuff Being Made,” we get a sneak peek at Dynamic Materials’ explosion welding process, the only welding method capable of joining nearly every kind of metal combination, regardless of the type or composition. Watch how the intense force of these high-powered explosions almost seamlessly welds large metal plates together. Fire in the hole! 

For more Cool Stuff videos, visit www.nam.org/CoolStuffBeingMade.

So do you know what the chief flavoring ingredient is in most pretzels? No, not the beer your drink while eating them. It’s malt (or as the case may be, malted corn syrup). And it’s a sodium-solution baked on that gives the pretzels that nice brown coloring.

Phil Bernas, technical manager of Herr Foods, guides us through the Nottingham, Pa., plant in this week’s Cool Stuff Being Made, explaining all the twists and turns and extrusion into metal dies of pretzel-making.

Pennsylvania is the land of snack-making, and Herr’s got its start with potato chips in 1946. From the company history:

The Herr Foods story began in 1946 when 21-year-old James Stauffer Herr bought a small potato chip company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for $1,750. In 1947, the business moved into a vacated tobacco shed on the Herr family farm. As he learned more about the business, Jim Herr developed new and better cooking processes and a delicious snack food became even better. As demand for Herr’s^® Potato Chips grew, so did the company.

Today the family-owned Herr’s employs 1,500 people who manufacture and distribute more than 350 snack products nationwide.

Thanks this week and most weeks to Pennsylvania Cable Network for sending the underlying video