20 Remarkable Reasons To Design With Aluminum Extrusions

Materials selection is an important part of designing your project. You'll want to consider a number of different materials. Each one has benefits and drawbacks. Maybe you're creating transportation products or consumer durables. Perhaps you're designing electronics or a construction project. If so, you are probably thinking about incorporating aluminum.

Aluminum is an amazing material. It's lightweight and strong. It's attractive. It accepts a wide range of finishes. The Aluminum Extruders Council offers a publication called the Aluminum Extrusion Manual. It is a great source of information, including the advantages of aluminum.

Here are 20 advantages that could make aluminum a wonderful choice.

#1 Recyclable: Aluminum can be recycled over and over again. When recycled, it still retains its innate characteristics.

#2 Lightweight: Aluminum weighs about one-third as much as steel, iron, brass or copper. When weight-savings are important, aluminum can be useful.

#3 Strong: Through alloying, aluminum can reach a tensile strength of up to 90,000 PSI.

#4 High Strength-to-Weight Ratio: Aluminum is both lightweight and strong. When you divide ultimate tensile by density, the ratio is highly desirable.

#5 Resilient: Aluminum has the ability to deflect under loads and then spring back. This is ideal where resiliency is important in design.

#6 Corrosion-Resistant: When exposed to air, a thin oxide layer forms on the aluminum's surface. This oxide layer makes it both durable and corrosion resistant.

#7 Thermally Conductive: Aluminum can transfer heat for both heating and cooling purposes. No other material conducts heat better on a weight to cost basis.

#8 Non-Toxic: In solid form aluminum can be great for food handling and preparation. It's easily cleaned and does not absorb bacteria.

#9 Reflective: Aluminum reflects more than just light. It also reflects radio waves and infrared radiation.

#10 Electrically Conductive: In terms of volume, aluminum has 62% the conductivity of copper. In terms of weight aluminum is more conductive than copper.

#11 Non-magnetic: Aluminum's non-magnetic properties make it good for high voltage hardware.

#12 Non-sparking: Aluminum is great for flammable and explosive situations. Also, exposing it to high heat generates no emissions.

#13 Attractive: Even without adding extra finishing aluminum looks nice. The metal can be anodized without affecting appearance.

#14 Cryogenically Strong: The lower the temperature gets, the stronger aluminum gets. This makes it great for cryogenic applications.

#15 Accepts Many Finishes: A variety of different surface textures can be created. The metallic hue can be changed as well.

#16 Complex Integral Shapes: Aluminum extrusions give you a cost-effective way to create highly precise shapes.

#17 Joinable: Aluminum extrusions can be welded, soldered, brazed or mechanically fastened. They can also be connected adhesively.

#18 Tolerancing: Aluminum extrusion tolerances tend to be more precise than competing processes.

#19 Cost-Effective: Tooling costs for aluminum extrusions tend to be very low.

#20 Short Lead Times: The turnaround time for aluminum profiles tends to be much faster than other processes.