How is plate aluminium made? - Printable Version +- Forums (https://askaluminium.com) +-- Forum: My Category (https://askaluminium.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: aluminium faq (https://askaluminium.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=2) +--- Thread: How is plate aluminium made? (/showthread.php?tid=85781)

How is plate aluminium made? - hmwadeseo - 02-21-2023 It’s all about the rolling. The process starts with a pre-heated sheet ingot weighing as much as 20 tons, typically around 6 feet wide, 20 feet long, and over two feet thick. The ingot is heated to something called rolling temperature before being carefully fed into a breakdown mill to be rolled to and fro until it’s a few centimetres thick. After this the slab that’s been created can be cold-rolled without heat, or heat-treated to boost the strength. The strongest alloys of all are heat-treated, quickly cooled to room temperature, then stretched to straighten the metal and fix any internal stresses and strains generated by the rolling and heat-treating processes. The plate aluminium is then either ‘aged’ naturally at room temperature, or aged artificially via a furnace. This develops the combination of strength and anti-corrosion the metal is so well know for. Last of all it’s trimmed to size either ready for sale or to be machined into a final product. Aluminium sheet and foil are often made much the same way, but the metal slab is sent through a continuous mill to reduce the thickness before being wound into a coil. These vast coils are cold-rolled several times and can also be re-heated to give the final product the mechanical properties required. Alternatively sheet and foil can be made via continuous casting, where melted metal in a caster generates hot rolled coils without all the casting and hot rolling.