Have you been told your extruded aluminum design is too small? That the walls are too thin? Are the tolerances too precise? Is the quantity too small? Profile Precision Extrusions has produced over 4,000 designs for customers who were told their design was too….fill in the blank. We break most of the aluminum extrusion industry “rules” every day. And we learn a lot in the process.
The first Aluminum Industry “rule” is that a customer must order at least 1,000 pounds. The poor engineer who designed a part that weighs .250 pounds/foot probably doesn’t need 4,000 feet of extrusion for his prototypes! The guy who made that rule just wants to sell a lot of aluminum. (His brother is probably a used car salesman) Neither one of them really has the customer’s best interest in mind.
The second “rule” is that the minimum wall thickness is .050”. What if you’re in the aerospace industry and every extra pound cost thousands of dollars in extra annual operational costs for an airplane? The guys designing satellites and rockets pay tens of thousands of dollars per pound in launch costs. Too bad say the “rule” makers.
The third “rule” is that The Aluminum Industry standard dimensional tolerances apply to all designs. This is an interesting “rule” because industry developed the tolerances 60 years ago, and the tolerances really haven’t changed much since. If you’ve designed a product that needs a .500” inside diameter tube to be held to +/- .001” to optimize its performance, the industry guys will tell you it can’t be done. The best they can do is +/-.010”. Thanks a lot!
Profile Precision Extrusions believes that rules are meant to be broken. That’s why we have no minimum order size, we can design the wall thicknesses down to .020”, and do our best to accommodate the dimensional tolerances the customer needs. Find out more about how Profile Precision can bring your aluminum extrusion design to life.
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