UK materials and nomenclature

Hi

Can some kind person help with:

Is aluminium stock (25.4 mm square section, 20 X 3 mm strip, 10 mm od tube) readily available in UK as it is here in Australia?

Is metric (rather than imperial) the normal measurement of eg drills etc.

Are 4mm bolts known as M4 bolts (and not screws).

This info needed to ensure an article written in Australia is suitable for a uk mag (not engineering!)

Thanks all.

Reply to
Suzy
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Material choice should be much better than in Australia.

Curiously, Whitworth, BSF, BA etc are hard to find in the UK. That is, you won't get new stocks of these fasteners at the suburban hardware stores. They'd gone over to metric almost completely by 2004 when I was there. It's nice we can still get both BSW and metric fasteners at the corner hardware in Oz.

I think of bolts as metal fasteners that have part of the shank unthreaded, screws (or setscrews) having threads all the way up. Usage varies. If it's important, you'd better mention it.

Reply to
Jordan

Although a very large percentage of 'standard' fasteners are now metric, and is very much the norm in industry, the 'traditional' amateur model engineering fraternity still utilise the older 'imperial' sizes to some degree. There are many suppliers of these - ususally via mail order - but inevitably they are getting harder to source from manufacturers. The same applies to tools such as drills. taps etc. ME exhibitions usually have many stands offering such stuff at good prices Mike

Reply to
MikeH_QB

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