Aluminium - advice needed

I doubt if the grade will make a scrap of difference to your application. The most common forged aluminium is HE30 which will be fine.

Send it to a company that does anodising?

But only if it can be anodised. :-) The AlSi0.5 is the common one, but soft like gum and not much fun to work with.

Nick

Not sure what alloy you are referring to but normal HE30 anodises fine and machines cleanly.

As Dave said HE30 (also known as 6082) or HE20 (6061) are good tough general purpose grades, and will both machine and anodise beautifully.

HE15 (2000 series) anodises like crap but machines OK. If you are planning on doing any machining to the plate, try to avoid using a

I had to bend and machine some parts from this grade recently, and whilst it bends very nicely as it's nearly pure aluminium, the machining characteristics are somewhat akin to a wet aubergine.

Peter

Thanks Dave, HE30 it is. I'll just be milling some grooves in it so I assume T6 will be OK. Is there anywhere which describes the properties of the different grades and tempers? Unfortunately I'm starting from zero knowledge - whatever I learned about this in school tech during the late 60s has long since dissipated.

Ref the anodising - I was hoping someone would describe a DIY method (maybe the word "easiest" was inappropriate ;-) ) I've just found

Dave

found

This site gives some good info on the various tempers etc which are available

With regards the anodising, just give an anodising company local to you a call - we've had stuff done by a company in Treorchy for next to nothing, but I doubt they'd get involved in mail-order anodising.

Hope this helps

Alastair

There used to be a super publication of which I have a copy from The Aluminuim Federation (AlFed). It was free on request at the time (late

Try Google>Dave Baker wrote:

Dave

If you send me your e-mail address via the PM system, I'll send yo copies of a couple of articles about home anodising that I copied fro somewhere (now forgotten) and are filed in my ever expanding futur projects folder!

Joh

-- jlh4

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Thanks John, I've just registered on RC groups especially to send you a PM

Dave

I find machining wet aubergines is a lot easier if you use paraffin or WD 40

Regards, Tony

Unfortunately it seems from their website that they are now more interested in making money than providing information.

However, there's some good info here:

Aah, that was my problem then. I was using garlic-infused olive oil

Peter

Philistine.......................

Dave , Try this website ,this guy amkes parts for telescopes and cameras ,does his own anodising. I haven't tried his methods as yet but have had the website bookmarked for longer than I can remember.

Fascinating! Thanks for the link.

The AlSi0.5 is Al with 0.5% Si*). Common alloy for drawn tubes and sheet metal. Welds nice, easy to anodize (we call it eloxal-quality; that includes a certain surface finish) but no fun to mill or turn. The more alloy-elements, the harder to anodize. Pb for example is a show-stopper.

Nick