80/20 Aluminum structures

Be sure to check their Ebay sellers site for dis-counted items and scratch-n-dent stuff.

Good luck

Jim Vrzal Holiday, Fl.

Hopefully Anthony will pipe in. I believe he uses a bunch. FWIW, just about every assembly station we get in has 80/20 as part of machine guarding.

Wes S

It's very popular with the homebrew CNC folks at

Lots of it, though I prefer Item.

Unless you want to inventory the stuff, take the time to design the frame and generate a cut list for the extrusion and a BoM for the misc hardware, rather than ordering a bunch of stuff and winging it at assembly. The (breathtaking) price per meter is the same for full or cut pieces and the cut charge is reasonable (~ $1.50/cut).

Here's an example of one of my projects on moving day...

Ned Simmons

"Tom Gardner" wrote in news:QUFph.58315$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr13.news.prodigy.net:

Tom, I use about $60k-$100k of the stuff a year, triple that for our plant as a total. Great stuff, and you can build about anything, BUT...

80/20 is too proud of their stuff $$$-wise. You will find Futura Industries T-Slots to be cheaper, by a considerable amount. Same size, interchangeable with 80/20, and they have all the same hardware and are adding to the selection all the time. I had Sean Turner in yesterday to go over some items they are adding for us. Send me an E-Mail at work and I'll hook you up with a distributor that will work well with you. BTW, did you get my order for those end brushes? Is the lead-time ok?

Ned Simmons wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.suscom-maine.net:

Ned, The price I pay is not unreasonable, compared to metal fabrication costs.

As I told Tom, please check out Futura Industries T-slot series. On a recent order of $6700 to T-slots, the exact item costs from 80/20 would have been $9400.

This only works if you do really small projects. All you need is a good miter saw with a non-ferrous blade and a manual mill to put the anchor cbores in with. Always use anchors if you can, it makes a much stronger joint with less hardware.

Also be aware that some extrusion systems are not vibration proof. 80/20 and T-Slots are, I am not sure about Item, I have had some equipment come in with Item extrusion on it, but I've never purchased any.

I didn't see the order, but I don't see usually orders unless there's a problem. End brushes shouldn't be a problem. I'll check out T-slots...thanks! And, I find your order...how did you transmit it?

"Tom Gardner" wrote in news:%z7qh.22650 $ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net:

My best guess would be fax. Should be 100 of them on the order. Purchasing takes care of that, I only fill out the req and tell em where to charge it..... and I did specify the 1/2" trim this time....hehe.

We use it all the time for machine bases. guarding and just about anything that we can. We stock the stuff, have a cold saw, full fixtures and stock most of the fasteners to put it together with.

Things to remember.... Aluminum cold flows like so much mud, especially under any sort of vibratory load Use lots of fasteners Use lots of braces Plan your load to only use the member in compression.

R. Wink

No question, just hard to swallow compared to the price of square steel tubing. One of the biggest advantages in my mind is it frees you up to design the frame last, rather than forcing you to fit the design schedule to the fabricator's lead time.

I think I've used some of their plain linear slides. McMaster sells them, but I never knew where they came from. Item doesn't offer anything comparable. Thanks for the heads up. I'll compare prices next time I'm building a frame.

I've got a saw and mill and have done it both ways. There's no question in my mind that ordering the pieces pre-cut works out better for me, even on jobs where I've used over $4000 of Item stuff. But my use is sporadic, which makes it painful to overbuy and difficult to justify the space required to maintain a nice setup for cutting. I have made fixtures for the mill that make prepping the joints efficient.

Ned Simmons

Ned Simmons wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.suscom-maine.net:

In addition, labor charges for fabbing steel will kill your budget.

When you call, ask for Sean Turner, knows his stuff.

No fixtures needed for anchors, just a vice and a 13/16" center cutting EM. I order the stuff 100 sticks or more at a whack, doesn't take us long to go through a rack of it. We do a machine conversion nearly every week, not counting the new builds. It takes about 10 sticks per conversion. We do so much of it we had to set up to do it. We made a table out of 80x80, with a 3/4" PVC top, mounted the saw to one end, bolted saw supports along the top, vice on the front, opposite corner. A long shelf underneath holds the vacuum for the saw and clean-up and longer cuttings. A second small shelf right under the saw holds a

14" x 20" x 10" plastic bin for the scraps too short to saw. We mounted the whole thing on 6" casters, with foot operated locking feet that raise the casters off the ground. We have an A-Frame rack for the extrusion, another for the fencing and plexi. All of the brackets, bolts, anchors and other hardware are kept in a 52" x 5' Lista cabinet on wheels. We just take the saw and cabinet to whatever machine we are working at on the manufacturing floor. The mill is in our shop

Our FIRST robotics team has been using the 1010 and 1020 material for framing our robots for the last 4 years. It is great stuff to work with and we have been lucky to pick it up on occasion at the local metal salvage place for $2/lb.

Regards, Bob Headrick mentor FIRST team 956

I've used it quite a bit & really like it. It's expensive, but if you are short for time, it's a great way to get something nice custom built in a hurry. Do the design carefully & order the cut pieces & parts. They are all set up to cut them & mill the fastener pockets quickly & accurately. I bought the end mills to make my own pockets, and that's come in handy more than once. I've had a few instances where I needed to custom fit something or screwed up & forgot a clamp pocket.

It's fun when the parts show up. It's like a giant erector set. The stuff goes together very easily, and is quite strong.

Doug White

Hmm... we started with welded aluminum and moved to 8020 - the kids could work with that and it was a lot faster to fabricate and make changes. Thanks for the Enco tip, although the prices there look about 20% higher than the local distributor.

- Bob Headrick