Billet-6061 aluminum

Billet is basically a term used to fancy something up. What it means is someone took a chunk of alum (or what ever material), then machined the object (in your case connecting rod) out of it. This as opposed to casting a rod, then just cleaning it up a bit for example.

As for the 6061 being strong enough, I dunno, I'm not real up on metalurigy (or spelling). But I really don't see why it wouldn't work.

Good luck

I was told once by an old aircraft mechanical design engineer that billet aluminum is a more "pure" aluminum than most other aluminum types. All aluminum has some impurities in it but billet is supposed to be with the "least" impurities than the rest. That is why it is used in a lot of military, aircraft, and space applications.

or so I was told.....

Billet is just a chunk of metal. Aluminum billet is a chunk of aluminum. To make a connecting rod from aluminum billet, you simply cut away everything that doesn't look like a connecting rod. Making things from billet is common in the racing, areospace, and specialty markets since no or very little investment is required and volumes are very low. To make the same part as a forging would actually result in a part that was stronger and more fatigue resistant but would require a much greater investment in tooling. To pay for that tooling you need volume. For small volume, you get billet.

You will be hard pressed to find anything made from billet on large volume mass produced goods. If you do, it's because for some reason or other, the customer is willing to pay dearly for it.

hmmm... that makes sense too since we only built a few of anything for the government.