The
aluminium plate production process
Even as experienced aluminium stockists, we still find
Aluminium Plate production impressive, you can check it out for yourself here. The rolling process kicks off with massive, pre-heated metal sheet
ingots weighing as much as 20 tons.
The
ingots tend to be around six feet wide, twenty feet long and over two feet thick. They’re fed into a breakdown mill and rolled back and forth until the metal reaches the right thickness. To make the finished item as strong and durable as possible, the plate is heat-treated then cooled rapidly in a process called ‘quenching’.
Stretching and straightening the metal at this stage relieves the build-up of internal stresses, then the plate is trimmed to size and ‘aged’ at a predetermined temperature to give it the properties required.
Aluminium Plate destined to become sheet or foil gets trimmed after leaving the breakdown mill, then put through what’s called a ‘continuous mill’ to make it even thinner before it is coiled and heated again in a furnace to soften it ready for ‘cold rolling’. Cold rolling is often the final stage in the sheet production process but for other applications, extra heat treatment increases the material’s strength even more.