Does anyone know where to get machined flat aluminium sheet of varying sizes and thicknesses in the UK?
Cheers
Rich
Does anyone know where to get machined flat aluminium sheet of varying sizes and thicknesses in the UK?
Cheers
Rich
Hi Rich,
Try a company called AALCO http://www.aalco.co.uk/
Thats the company the two engineering companies I have worked for get theirs from.
Also find attached a pdf containing info about their Alu Plate.
Hope thats of a help to you,
Onge
Last edited by Onge; 12-01-2008 at 13:05. Reason: Sppeeelin Mishtake
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Seems to be a error when opening the PDF. Does anyone else have a problem?
What Aluminum Alloy Type are most people on PL using?
Opens fine for me. I would use 6061-T6 or 7075 if I were you. The 6061 is a little easier to mill, but is more flexible compared to the 7075. Also, the 7075 is more expensive.
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Rich, try Metalweb www.metalweb.co.uk they are located around the UK and are pretty good but have a £50 minium order unless you have an account.
In the UK, 6082 plate is readily available and a good all-round compromise.
If you're building a rather serious projector then it worth getting it surfaced, if not you can de-nib it and get a pretty good finish with 600 wet/dry with WD40 and a flat rubbing block so long as the plate isn't badly damaged.
As a thickness gauge I personally wouldn't use less than 6mm for a small projector, 8mm for medium and 12-15mm for a large and keep all optical paths as short as possible.
When shopping around ask for "plate" rather than "sheet" or you'll end up with something guillotine cut (possibly quite distorted as a result), soft as shit with the thermal stability of an ice-cream in a sauna
Thanks guys, great info. I'll start looking in the next couple of days and try and get something ordered.
Cheers
Rich
You could also try Aluminium Droitwich they advertise on Fleabay! if you want 'off trhe shelf' they take custom orders 2x cuts free I think....
I bought 6mm sheet....gave them spec over the phone paid credit card, very reasonable too. Very helpfull people arrived no hastle and exactly as spec'd
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Aluminium-Droitwich
Kev
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hear hear..
we built our first multicolour on 10mm that was guillotine cut, and couldn't work out why the arctos red kept going out of alignment.
It wasn't until we unscrewed it and it's alignment improved a little bit that we realised the baseplate was warped like hell..
Lessons learnt:
lesson #1: do not screw down a laser to a warped baseplate. chances are the laser will give in, not the baseplate. red faced, and after countless attempts to fix the arctos, we sent ours back for an expensive realignment.
lesson #2: no guillotine cuts. never.
lesson #3: 6mm baseplate for an RGB is pretty thin, you should probably use a thicker baseplate. oh hold on, wrong thread...
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You want to ask about aluminum or as you put it aluminium tooling plate.
It is cast and machined at the factory. It is not good for building high stress parts but for a optical table it will work great. I have used it for mine.
Machining cold rolled materials is tough because it will relieve internal stresses and warp all to hell. There are ways around this but tooling plate is the simplest.
Like Ben said, 6061 is a good choice, 7075 is better but it is going to be much more expensive. I do disagree about the machining though. 6061 is usually a lot gummier to machine. I find 7075 as well as 2000 series to machine better. But 6061 is no big deal at all and is cheap and plentiful.
chad
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