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.

How to Get the Aluminum Extrusions You Need From Gabrian

At Gabrian we have the largest aluminum extrusions plant in India. We pride ourselves on high-quality extrusions, competitive prices and on-time delivery.

Learn more about our aluminum extrusion capabilities.