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Aug 2,2023

Why Choose Aluminum Parts for Precision

Precision machining is a procedure that manufacturers employ to remove excessive raw material from a part while holding close tolerance finishings to develop a completed product. Simply, it means shaping a material’s huge pieces into more precise components to ensure they meet exact specifications. This procedure involves turning, milling, electrical discharge machining, and cutting. Manufacturers usually use computerized numerical control machines to perform this precision machining.

Precision machining ensures that manufacturers produce both small and large products that people use in their daily lives. This blog section discusses the reasons behind choosing aluminum parts for precision applications encouraging you to buy these parts from a well-reputed bulk aluminum machined parts dealer. 

Precision Manufacturing

Machined aluminum parts allow manufacturers to carry out precision manufacturing that ensures they make components with high accuracy and tolerances. By employing technologies like computerized numerical control machining and three-dimensional printing, makers can achieve exact results that are tough to attain with conventional production methods.

The precision here means that manufacturers can use the products made from machined aluminum parts in different applications where accuracy is essential, like automotive, medical, and aerospace industries. 

Simple to Machine

Manufacturers can quickly machine aluminum, which tells us they can precisely shape and form it to meet specifications. This is necessary for applications where tight tolerances are needed. Aluminum features very high dimensional stability. Thus, machinists could cut away from this metal and keep residual stress in check.

Using advanced coolants and carbide tooling, manufacturers can use machined aluminum components to make products with excellent finishing and bead blast them for a matt finish.

They can anodize these components for constant aesthetic finishing and equip them with the ability to offer extra corrosion resistance. In this manner, manufacturers can produce precise products with machined aluminum components. 

Precise Dimensions

Manufacturers can make machined aluminum components to exact dimensions, essential for applications where accuracy is important. 

Benefits of Using Aluminum for Machining

Ideal Strength to Weight Ratio

The weight of aluminum is lower than that of other metals, so if manufacturers are interested in cutting, it is an excellent option. Whereas pure aluminum’s tensile strength is lesser than one hundred megapascals, it could be hardened as follows.

Alloying, mixing aluminum with other elements enhances its grain structure.

Heat treatment, heating aluminum, and then cooling this metal at a particular rate to develop ideally sized crystals.

Work hardening, intentionally deforming aluminum to change its grain structure. Manufacturers usually do this through heat treating (rolling, for instance, could be done after forging).

A temper designation shows the strength or precise condition of the resulting substance. T for thermal and H for hardened.

Here, several aluminum alloys have a greater strength-to-weight ratio, or particular strength, than stainless steel, three hundred and sixteen L.

High Corrosion Resistance

Whereas corrosion resistance would differ between grades, aluminum is an ideal choice for manufacturers who need to make highly corrosion-resistant metals. This metal and its composites feature a great affinity for oxygen metals that are very reactive such as magnesium will oxidize simply, whereas less reactive metals develop a loose oxide layer like rust on steel and iron.

Contrary to that, when manufacturers expose aluminum, it develops a passivating aluminum oxide layer that seals the surface averting further erosion and oxidation. This coating is self-repairing even if people scratch it. Thus, aluminum might not need surface treatments or painting, providing you with a cost saving on lifetime service and production costs.

Broad Choice of Alloys and Material Qualities

In fact, as aluminum is such an ideal material to work with, there are many composites available, each of which has different qualities and applications to meet their needs. Here are some of the very popular grades of aluminum. 

2024- Aerospace Grade

This grade of aluminum has high fatigue strength; it trades final tensile strength for greater toughness or ductility after manufacturers alloy it with copper. 

5083-Marine Grade

Marine grade with great corrosion resistance because it contains high magnesium content. 

6082- Aerospace Grade and General Purpose

This grade of aluminum has a nice blend of corrosion resistance, ductility, and strength which have made it versatile. Manufacturers often use this type of aluminum. They produce this grade of aluminum by alloying this metal with a mixture of silicon and magnesium( it is almost equal to six thousand and sixty-one).

High Conductivity

Whereas manufacturers often use copper for electrical conductivity, they also use aluminum to make electrical components because it is much lighter and affordable.

In fact, manufacturers use it to make connectors, battery cables, and busbars, especially in electric vehicle and automotive applications. Its nice thermal conductivity also ensures that manufacturers use it to dissipate heat. 

Recyclability

People keep sustainability high in their agendas. Therefore, three-fourths of the aluminum produced is yet in use. Recycling aluminum utilizes less power than making it, and as long as manufacturers can keep their impurities in check, they can reuse aluminum.

A Benefit of Computerized Numerical Control Machining 

Cost Savings

Whereas machining needs specialized expertise and machine, it provides many benefits over conventional production procedures regarding cost savings. For instance, machined aluminum composites often need lesser raw materials than other materials such as wood or steel, which enables manufacturers to significantly cut down material costs.

Apart from that, as computerized numerical control machines can operate at a faster speed than conventional manufacturing processes, they also need less labor time- leading to decreased labor costs. Ultimately, machined parts often need less post-processing than those manufactured using traditional procedures. This helps in reducing overall manufacturing costs even further. 

Industries Using Customized Machined Aluminum Parts

Aerospace

Customized machined aluminum parts can handle extreme stresses and presses that a plane experiences at high altitudes without suffering because they do not lose their structural integrity.

By choosing aluminum machined parts instead of steel, engineering professionals can drastically decrease the plane’s weight, thereby improving fuel efficiency and increasing the number of passengers or the level of load a plane could efficiently carry. 

Telecommunications

Manufacturers use aluminum to produce a broad range of telecommunication components, encompassing heat sink housings, cavities, and covers. Telecom cavities need a great degree of precision, which manufacturers could achieve by machining aluminum. 

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What is The Typical Tolerance for Injection Molded Parts?

An immense number of plastic products are produced every day in the world. From a bottle cap to an entire plastic tank, thousands of products are manufactured with the help of plastic injection methods in the plastic industry. It seems so simple because of the metallic molds that are used in this process. All you need to do is add polymers in the injection and fill the mold with high temperatures to get the shape you want. But the casting needs a precise mold for that. Without that mold, you can’t produce thousands of plastic products a day. This is what we are going to learn in this blog. How these metallic molds get accurate designs and shapes is what you need to know here.  With the help of CNC machines, you can make any metallic mold to operate the plastic injection process. How do these CNC machines produce such sharp and detailed molds for any kind of unique plastic product? That is only possible if you have highly efficient CNC machines. Even if you don’t have that, you can get metallic molds from a CNC plastic parts factory. You will be able to get durable metallic molds to process plastic injection production easily. Let’s see what makes these CNC machines perform this task with much efficiency. Tolerance Level for Plastic Injection Molded Parts Tolerance level is the main factor here, which makes the mold sharp. The tighter the tolerance level, the sharper the edges are. Normally, an average tolerance ranges between +/- 0.002 inches and +/- 0.005 inches for plastic molds. Each production type has a different level of tolerance. If you go for tighter tolerance for injection molding, it will be +/- 0.002 inches. Moreover, if you further go for the tightest tolerance, it reaches +/- 0.001 inches. This is the minimum tolerance level to design a complicated mold for the plastic injection process. As a result, you will have to choose the tolerance extreme to meet unique designs and shapes of molds. Due to detailing this is a very important part of this method. However, there is a cost issue. Tighter tolerance causes a higher cost of production and also more time consumption. Resultantly, you will get the complex design of the mold, but its cost will be higher than a simple one. That is a crucial thing you need to keep in mind while using a CNC machine in mold manufacturing.  Ways to Achieve that Tolerance Level There are some simple ways to achieve a tolerance level for plastic injection molds. Since these molds need to be very smooth and precise in terms of design, they need a strict tolerance level. You can achieve that level by using these simple tricks with your CNC machines.  High Spindle Speed The spindle motor is a very important component in speed management. You can get a very high accuracy through it. Normally, the spindle motor’s speed ranges between 24000 RPM and 30,000 RPM. In addition, the spindle motor’s speed has different ranges according to the type of material and handling. For plastic molds, we can go for this range. Having a speed of around 24000 RPM will be ideal in this case. It will keep the precision level at an accurate mode. Make sure you don’t cross this speed range because the spindle motor has a limit, and different sizes of spindle motors are used for it. If you are going for less precision, you need an average motor for basic speeding.  Carbide Type When it comes to milling, drilling, and cutting in a CNC machine, carbide has to do this task. In this way, carbide has to be tough enough to meet all the requirements. Normally, each carbide type has a different grade in this process. Each Grade has different levels of endurance and performance. For plastic injection molds, we use C2-grade carbides. This C2 Grade helps to meet detailing with smooth results. You can use C2 or even C1 Grade for that purpose. Mostly. C2 Grade of carbide is used for it.   Wall Thickness Level Another factor is the wall thickness level. In CNC machining, this factor has to be ensured for high accuracy of injection molding of plastic parts. The wall thickness is between 0.5 mm to 27 mm, usually for plastic parts molds. Plastic types like ABS, acrylic, polyethylene, polyester, etc., are used for this range of wall thickness. You can make molds with CNC machines by maintaining the wall thickness level as per your requirement. Some plastic types need wall thickness levels between 0.5 to 0.7 mm, some need 1 mm to 2 mm, and so on. You need to decide what kind of mold you need to manufacture and what kind of plastic-type will be injected into it. According to that, you will be able to produce the best standard of mold.  That’s all you can have here. If you can produce your own molds, you need a CNC machine for that. Otherwise, you can order molds from a bulk supplier.

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