Enormous aluminum rods

Saw a flatbed truck on the highway last night, hauling approximately forty pieces of what appeared to be 8" diameter x 20' long solid aluminum rods.

What on earth would those be used for?

Reply to
Doug Miller
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Feed stock for rolling/extruding machinery?

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

Just about anything. Not a flippant remark. On the metal cart in the tool room we have pieces from 4" dia to 15" dia of various materials. Those pieces came off of something longer.

Someone is going to pipe up and call that small stuff.

Wes

Reply to
clutch

Umm--to make parts machined out of 8" aluminum stock? You sure they were aluminum? Might have been stainless or titanium.

Possibly they are stock for aluminum extrusion.

Reply to
Bill Marrs

Well, I wondered about that -- but it seemed to me that the plant that produced those enormous rods could just as easily have produced whatever might be extruded from them.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Of course -- but what kind of parts, is what I was curious about.

No, not sure. I assumed they were aluminum based on two observations: first, the color; second, the fact that flatbed trailers (I did say 'truck' at first, but it was a tractor-trailer rig) are manufactured with an arch so that they can deflect to flat under load, instead of sagging -- and the arch was still prominently visible, indicating that the load was not especially heavy. From that I conclude that it wasn't steel of any sort, and aluminum seemed the most likely. Could easily have been another lightweight metal such as titanium, though.

Guess so.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Well, not always. There are many custom extruders around that are not foundries or mills in the "bulk materials" sense.

We have an extrusion plant in Tampa that makes all sorts of screen room mouldings, but they buy their feedstock.

OTOH, I have several "rounds" in my stockpile of 6061 in diameters from 4" to 12". So those could just be destined for a machine shop somewhere.

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

Yea, I often machine solid aluminum chunks that are several hundred pounds, and steel chunks that can be over 1000. Big parts need big chunks. :)

Reply to
Dave Lyon

On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 13:22:27 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@milmac.com (Doug Miller) quickly quoth:

Dubya must have a new weapon planned: A Bigass Texas Slingshot!

-- Don't take life so seriously. You'll never get out of it alive. --Elbert Hubbard

Reply to
Larry Jaques

The billets are preheated, then loaded, one after the other, and rammed through a huge extruder. The ones I've seen are shorter than

20', though.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Parts more than likely. Ive a number of clients who have bar feeders that will push that medium sized stock through the 16" spindle bores of their CNC lathes.

Shrug..its not all that big in the grand scheme of machines. Some shops will simply cut em off on a CNC/NC/PLC bandsaw and load em a piece at a time into a chuck. Ive got some slab rounds that are 14" that were cut offs from bars

Gunner

"Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide"

- James Burnham

Reply to
Gunner

Reply to
David Billington

It's called bar stock, or to the uninformed, "billet". It's available in even larger sizes.

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

None of them resemble one another. It would be difficult to confuse them. Aluminum is very white. Stainless, depending on the alloy, leans yellow. Titanium is gray.

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

Reply to
RoyJ

Yup, 40 pieces of 8" x 20 foot bar would be 47,360 Lbs, a reasonable load for a semi. That would already be under some weight restrictions, at 23 tons + the truck itself.

Stainless would be 140,960 Lbs, severely over the federal highway load limit. Ti would be 78,680, they run stuff like this all the time in Michigan on 5, 7 even 9-axle trailers.

And, it sure wasn't Tungsten, at 336,920 Lbs.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

Yup, one of our presses would handle billets about 3' long and 12" in diameter, extruded motor home chassis frame members, sort of I-beamish in cross-section. Had a whole room, probably 50x50, filled with rollers for the extruded parts to go shooting down. Did trim on the smaller press, billets were probably 8" dia. on that one. Chopped them to length in place on the rollers, then slid them into the heat treat ovens at one side of the roller room. A very noisy operation, too.

Stan

Reply to
stans4

I saw one ingot of Ti--18to24" in dia--maybe 30' long--The beautiful rainbow colors are hard to forget. Jerry

Reply to
Jerry Wass

Here >

Reply to
Jerry Wass

Reply to
David Billington

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