Metallurgy only appears in Mesoamerica in 800 CE with the best evidence from West Mexico. Much like in South America, fine metals were seen as a material for the elite. Metal's special qualities of colour and resonance seemed to have appealed most and then led to the particular technological developments seen in the region.
Exchange of ideas and goods with peoples from the Ecuador and Colombia region (likely via a maritime route) seems to have fueled early interest and development. Similar metal artifact types are found in West Mexico and the two regions: copper rings, needles, and tweezers being fabricated in the same ways as in Ecuador and also found in similar archaeological contexts. A multitude of bells were also found, but in this case they were cast using the same lost-wax casting method as seen in Colombia. During this period, copper was being used almost exclusively.
Continual contact kept the flow of ideas from that same region and later, coinciding with the development of Andean long distance maritime trade, influence from further south seems to have reached the region and led to a second period (1200–1300 CE to the Spanish arrival). By this time, copper alloys were being explored by West Mexican metallurgists, partly because the different mechanical properties were needed to fashion specific artifacts, particularly axe-monies – further evidence for contact with the Andean region. However, in general the new properties such alloys introduced were developed to meet regional needs, especially wirework bells, which at times had such high tin content in the bronze that it was irrelevant for its mechanical properties but gave the bells a golden colour.
The actual artifacts and then techniques were imported from the south, but west Mexican metallurgists worked ores from the abundant local deposits; the metal was not being imported. Even when the technology spread from West into north-eastern, central and southern Mexico, artifacts that can be traced back to West Mexican ores are abundant, if not exclusive. It is not always clear if the metal reached its final destination as an ingot, an ore or a finished artifact. Provenance studies on metal artifacts from southern Mesoamerica cast with the lost wax technique and dissimilar to west Mexican artifacts have shown that there might have been a second point of emergence of metallurgy into Mesoamerica there since no known source could be identified.
In the Tarascan Empire, copper and bronze was used for chisels, punches, awls, tweezers, needles, axes, discs, and breastplates.
The Aztecs did not initially adopt metal working, even though they had acquired metal objects from other peoples. However, as conquest gained them metal working regions, the technology started to spread. By the time of the Spanish conquest, a  bronze-smelting technology had already been developed. Spanish conquistadors used indigenous smelting technology to produce weapons and tools.