While there are many advantages to designing your own custom extrusion dies to create a truly unique aluminum extrusion design, it is important to understand what it means to design your own profiles and what you need to do to make the process even easier. Your best bet is to work with a professional organization that specializes in creating custom aluminum products and get advice, assistance and support from their engineering team to help you create the best possible version that will embrace the advantages of using aluminum extrusion for your design.
Like anything else, the more you understand about how custom extrusion dies work and the results that come from a well executed and thought out aluminum extrusion design, the better the finished product will be. The rest of this article will discuss the key points surrounding the different parts of the profile creation for your custom aluminum products.
If you have any additional questions on how you can incorporate tried and true ideas that will help you benefit from the advantages of using aluminum, make sure to contact Silver City Aluminum in Taunton, MA and speak with one of our experienced technicians. We work with clients all over the globe to deliver top quality results with all of our standard stock profiles and custom extrusion dies to provide parts, pieces and custom aluminum products that will meet or exceed your expectations.
The Walls
When you begin to design a custom profile for a specific purpose or industry product, it is important to think about the key elements that need to go into that design for it to be successful. The first place that most designers start with is the “walls,” or the exterior and surrounding area of the aluminum extrusion design. It is important to maintain a uniform thickness of the outer wall for your custom extrusion dies or, at the very least, a near uniform thickness.
Walls that are not properly balanced with thickness will experience a variation in the flow of aluminum material between the thicker and thinner areas. As a result, areas that are thinner will cool faster than the thicker sections and the profile may require extra attention once the metal has been extruded. The unique design of your custom aluminum products must be reviewed by an expert technician, who can point out any potential design flaws and suggest alternative options that will help you to reduce costs and lead times.
Having a balance in the uniformity of the walls within your custom extrusion dies has many advantages, including an improved control of tolerances and increased options for configuration. By ensuring that everything will cool and set at the proper times compared to all of the other elements, you reduce potential increases in cost for secondary operations or special cooling requirements. A much smoother and more efficient production process is another huge advantage of using aluminum extrusion that has been properly designed.
The Hollows
The hollowed out sections of your custom aluminum extrusion design must also be designed carefully for best results. In fact, many experts discourage the use of hollowed out sections unless they are included to help balance the walls of the custom aluminum products. The costs associated with creating custom aluminum dies that include hollow sections will be much higher than more standard designs.
It is important to take time to learn a little bit more about proper design for hollow sections in order to truly appreciate the advantages of using application as the product material. You should always avoid designing a small hollow inside of a larger hollow for your custom profiles. Close tolerances for this type of design are practically impossible to achieve. Designers should also avoid creating hollow sections that feature internal legs or projections in order to maintain close tolerances.
The Corners & Radii
Two other important areas that must be considered when working with aluminum extrusion design are the corners and the radii, which are interlinked and must be defined properly for best results. During the extrusion process of creating custom aluminum products, the materials bridge the corners of the custom extrusion dies to form the radii. The sharpest corner that can be created on the outside is one sixty-fourth of an inch, which is relatively sharp and provides designers with plenty of options.
Through proper design, a notch sensitive situation can be avoided that could possibly cause a break on one of those really sharp corners. The inside radius should also be a minimum of one sixty-fourth of an inch as well. Designers are encouraged to create aluminum extrusion design that has even wider corners, whenever possible. The larger the corners, the easier it will be for the aluminum materials to flow through the profile during the extrusion process. If you have any questions about corners and radii for your custom extrusion dies, don’t be afraid to ask a technician for assistance.
Silver City Aluminum for Custom Extrusion Design
Contact the team of highly trained and experienced aluminum extrusion designers and technicians at Silver City Aluminum to learn more about designing custom aluminum products and the advantages of using aluminum in your design. We can help you narrow your options down with our wide selection of standard profiles or help you in the planning, design and execution of your custom extrusion dies. Give us a call at 508-824-8631 for a FREE estimate or to get started with your aluminum extrusion design.