Aluminum Profiles

Hi, here i let you with an aluminum manufacturing video, it is in spanish but i take my time to translate it for you. It’s very interesting understand how aluminum products that surround us are manufacture. So, I hope to enjoy this video and learn a lot from it.

The ingots are place in the charger and then the chains carry the ingot into the pusher area while two hydraulic arms load the slug in the center of the oven. The pusher transport ingots into the furnace where they are heater to a temperature of 400 C, then when the ingot is out of the oven a weed cut it into pieces called billets that are delivered to the extrusion press, the diameter of the billet can be load depending on the type of press. As bigger is the diameter of the billet, bigger the force that needs the hydraulic press to mantain the same mechanical specific extrussion pressure while higher is the profile section that can be extrude. This means that the type of press depends of the final product that you want to produce. The press has a pair of hydraulic pumps that drive the spindle through a hydraulic cylinder; the force applied on the billet rod makes the material flow across the matrix where it gets its final form. At exit, the profile is cooled by water or air to achieve the desired metallurgical properties; the puller holds the profile and guides ir along the output table. Once the extrusion is finish while charging the following billet into the press, the extrude billet is cut, it is evacuated from exit and remains a time on the cooling table before ir is drawn through the traction bench eliminating the internal tensions straightening of the material and profile, then profiles are cut to size and are places in baskets by hand or machines, the baskets passed through the furnace of maturity where mechanical strenght is increased by heat treatment. Finally the profiles are packed for its delivery to the final customer.

At this blogspot we love all the aluminum possibilities. Nice, doesn´t?

[Via Youtube]

Aluminum Violin History

Aluminium Violin, 1932

Instrument Company
Historial Society of Western Pennsylvania

Alfred Springer patented an aluminum violin in 1891 which was well received and played to critical acclaim both in the US and abroad. The Springer Violin was machined from aluminum with top, back and sides of metal; only the neck and fittings were wood. In 1894 the John Church Company announced they were working on an Aluminum violin of their own, built by the Imperial Company, Church's small instrument manufacturing arm. In 1910 Edgar l'Allemand a WI violin maker, revived the interest in aluminum violins, but on a small, handmade scale. A notice in the December, 1914 Music Trades magazine stated that William Koelpin had made an aluminum violin while in the process of testing an aluminum solder he invented. Aluminum bass violins were made and sold in the 1930s & 40s and The Boston Pops orchestra had one for many years.

In fact we can conclude that aluminum castings have many possibilities for development, in this case the music industry was able to improve important innovations on sound across the creation of an aluminum violin, breaking with past that centered all of music instruments on wood.

Aluminum rules! That's why you should use it.

[Via Michael I. Holmes]

Permanente mold

At foundry instead of using sand a metal is used as a mold, typically cast iron is used as the mold material and the cores are made from metal or sand. Cavity surfaces are coated with a thin layer of heat resistant material such as clay or sodium silicate. The molds are pre-heated before the metal is poured into the cavity and care has to be taken to ensure proper thermal balance by using external water cooling or appropriate radiation techniques.

Permanent mold castings, while not as flexible as sand castings in allowing the use of different patterns, lower the cost of producing a parta, at a production run of a thousand or more parts permanent mold castings produce a lower piece cost part.

(via Efunda)