5 Things to Know About Aluminum Plate Suppliers Before Choosing One

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Because suppliers provide customers with different types of finished products, it is imperative that you choose wisely. For example, for superior-quality plates, you want to do business with one of the top-rated aluminum plate suppliers. In other words, make sure you select a company that supplies the specific product you need.

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Following are five things to consider before you choose a supplier.

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1. Inequality &#; While all suppliers of aluminum plates deliver the same product, this does not mean equality across the board. Whether you are buying an aluminum plate for your manufacturing process or as part of the product you offer to your customer, quality and precision are essential. When selecting a supplier, always choose one with years of experience and unparalleled expertise specific to the product you need.
2. Manufacturing &#; Suppliers provide finished plates that come from aluminum plate manufacturers. Since they are also unique from one another, it is imperative that you work with a supplier that has connections with trusted manufacturing companies. Then, you have the assurance that the company uses only the best aluminum material, follows strict manufacturing processes to meet high industry standards, and utilizes cutting-edge machinery.
3. Pricing &#; Unfortunately, many people believe the only way to buy outstanding aluminum plates is by spending a significant amount of money. The fact is that the right supplier delivers high-quality finished products at an affordable price. Just because a supplier offers you an outstanding deal does not automatically equate to compromised product quality.
4. Customization &#; Another misconception is that a supplier only offers standard products. Remember, if you choose a supplier with trusted connections to the best aluminum plate manufacturers, you can have plates customized to meet your specific criteria.
5. Quick Turnaround and High Production &#; Before you select one supplier for an aluminum plate, make sure it can meet your demands. For instance, if you often need a quick turnaround or a high production run, you want to confirm that it can accommodate.

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As a global supplier of aluminum ingots and plates, Offshore Direct Metals guarantees its products are superior quality and competitively priced. Our expertise, vast network around the world, and logistical experience give us an advantage that we then pass down to you. To learn more about our aluminum plates and the processes we use, we invite you to browse our website or call to speak with a representative directly.

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By overengineering I mean taking a design that might be suitable for manufacture in a professional foundry and just adding an additional safety factor to account for inconsistencies related to the home shop setup. My research puts the fatigue strength of non-tempered A356 aluminum around psi, so in theory a casting of this type should be able to hold lb indefinitely if it has an area of say 1 inch x 1/8th inch in the load direction. The question is how much larger should my casting be to be considered "safe". That is just for example by the way, I certainly am not planning on suspending a lb load from a homemade aluminum casting.

I was not aware of the grain structure issues with larger castings, so I'm already glad about posting this thread. I'm curious what the maximum wall thickness should be for sand casting? I'm getting a range of answers online from 0.2 to 1 inch. In any case adding ribs and/or increasing contact area will be my main focus in design.

I read through the thread on sawdust degassing, seems like a viable method and I'm looking forward to giving it a shot. I have heard about the pool shock method but I'm just not very keen on standing over a pot of molten metal that's spewing chlorine gas. After refining a mold I would have no problem purchasing some clean casting alloy for functional parts. The difference between even assorted scrap castings and regular extrusions is staggering.

This is a good point, luckily most of what I have in mind currently are things like brackets, bases, and other custom mounting solutions like your motor mounts. Nothing that will cause some catastrophe if it fails, but I'd like to do enough engineering to have confidence in my work. I'm not concerned about appearance necessarily, in fact a little evidence of the process can be a point of pride for me, I just want to confirm that some porosity isn't going to impede functionality.

I like the cantilever idea for assessing tensile strength, especially that it will give me a value for yield strength, as well as breaking. I have a stock of casting alloy from a full set of wheels I picked up a while back, so I have plenty of material to refine the process. I've been wanting to get a baseline of this material as it should be plenty strong enough for low load applications. Of course once I have a good pattern for the coupon I can make 1 or 2 with each pour to check for consistency with the design. I'm really curious to see how close it will be to the published values.

It's certainly a subject I've considered at length and have had the benefit of having friends that were professional foundrymen and ability to observe their practices. There certainly is no reason that industry best practice cannot be achieved by a hobbysist, but whether that is practical or not in that setting may be another matter. If you find degassing to be too cumbersome, you have a long way to go to emulate the pros.

Knowing the strength of material is certanly valuable information assuming you can accurately predict the state of stress to begin with. Can you? You need to know the character and nature of loading and have a very accurate FEA model and analysis.

Managing metal quality and H2 porosity in particular is certainly one of the prime issues, but the other, is one-off versus the development work typically done to put a part into production in commercial manufacturing enviroment. That will invlove iterative prototyping, destructive testing, and the abilty to reliably measure your results.

You can make and test all the sample coupons you like, but that doesn't mean your castings will uniformly exhibit the same qualities. Often times, the design features of a casting will mean that it won&#;t freeze uniformly or in a directionally consistent manner (thick sections/intersections for example), and those areas are the ones most likely to exhibit H2 porosity and related shrink defects and experienced foundrymen go right to them when they section and analyze the casting. If those areas happen to coincide with a critically stressed location, it can be bad news or at minimum require some iterative development of the part and feed system to achieve satisfactory results. Then there are usually production sampling plans to insure that everything stays in control along the way.

Most foundries will have the means of testing metal samples directly for H2 content and that would be done before any mechanical testing. There still is value to going to the effort of tensile testing or polishing and sectioning if nothing more as a means of verifying you can control the consistency of your mold media, furnace tune, and as far as using scrap metal, I'd say forget that unless you have a highly reliable source of information as to the alloy.......and don't assume all wheels are 356, because that is not always so. You might argue why do I have to know the metal composition if I know it's strength? If yield and tensile is all that is important, maybe, but then there&#;s fatigue, post heat treating, etc...

If you have a fuel fired furnace, you will move a very large mass of combustion air through your furnace and there will be a large amount of water along for the ride, and if you live in a very humid enviroment, that will be a very large amount of water. You should do the calculation but you will be surprised at that mass of water. Commercial foundries will purge and blanket the melt in a holding furnace just to prevent H2 infiltration when there is no flow!

I use a resistive electric furnace because it has no air flow. In fact, for reasons I'm not quite certain, it seems to have less than atmospheric levels of O2, because if I melt scrap and lift the lid, it will often flash when exposed to air. But I largely avoid exposing the melt to large amounts of water. If you have a fuel fired furnace, crucible hat and purge gas may help, but can also be cumbersome.

I'm a lost foam caster and my mold media is dry sand. I dont have to control or worry about the moisture or other binder content, because it's not there. As far as lost foam being more prone to defects and porosity, I'd say that has not been my experienec, at least no more or less than conventional sand casting. The byproducts of decomposed foam are not soluable in Aluminum. In fact most things are not to any appreciable level. It's just H2 that is the bugger. However I will concede when the castings become thick, I do see more defects, but so do conventional sand castings. I have my coating permeability tuned to produce best results at 1/4" wall thickness.

In the end, because of all the things that need to be controlled, most engineers avoid castings for critcally stressed parts and will opt for machined wrought/billet or forgings. If it's a one-off, it's almost always a CNC'd part from wrought unless you need the strength of a forging and ability to validate a design for production. It is generally excepted that the mechanical properties of castings are derated by process with die cast being the best, then shell/investment, and sand.

Commercial aircraft production spars and ribs are CNC machined from large Aluminum billets. 95% of the billet becomes chips. One example I see from time to time is the triple tree clamp on a motorcycle. Why on Earth would you cast a small part tlike that when it will need finsihed maching anyway? Especially if you are making one?

Best,
Kelly