Aluminum Manufacturing
By M.Hagaman | Updated March 2022 | 10 minute read
Benefits of Aluminum Manufacturing – From Your Everyday Products To Recycling
Aluminum Manufacturing
Did you know you use manufactured aluminum products every day? Aluminum is in many items all around us. From household items like your furniture, tables, chairs, lamps, to kitchen appliances and pots and pans. Even from soda cans to your iPhone.
Aluminum and Aluminum alloy is a major part of many of your day-to-day manufactured goods.
The aluminum industry in the United States in 2014 produced 1.72 million tons of aluminum. That is worth 3.97 billion dollars in manufactured goods. That is a TON of aluminum…pun intended.
According to a recent blog from The Aluminum Assoication, “Over the past decade, the aluminum industry has invested more than $4 billion is U.S manufacturing to support growing demand for metal.”
Aluminum Manufactures
Because we have been able to harvest the power of aluminum metal, non-ferrous foundries and metal fabricators can help manufacture aluminum products.
At Precise Cast, we offer quality aluminum prototypes and productions parts. We work with some of the largest companies in the North American market. Producing quality aluminum metal castings and machined parts.
We have built many long-lasting relationships with customers from wide-ranging industries such as: Robotics, Agricultural, Architectural castings.
Learn more about our Aluminum Casting Foundry.
What Makes Aluminum So Popular For Manufactured Goods?
Aluminum is a lightweight, yet strong material with high corrosion resistance. It’s easy to weld, cut, and machine making it suitable for a wide range of applications including braces, shafts, supports, pins, dowels, and more.
Aluminum prototypes and manufactured products have an advantage because of the excellent strength-to-weight ratio. Light metals are an easy move toward green production with 100% recyclability.
With the correct accounting for different densities, end-of-life recycling, and use stage efficiency gains, aluminum parts present an incredibly competitive cradle-to-gate carbon footprint advantage over higher density materials.
Brief History of Aluminum
Aluminum is the most abundant element in the crust of the Earth and is a crucial building block for many industries.
Though we use aluminum in many manufactured goods today it took thousands of years and a few different scientists to bring us our magnificent aluminum alloy.
From early Mesopotamia to ancient Rome, a version of aluminum was being used that was called Alum.
Alum is an aluminum sulfate that can be derived from the same materials in which aluminum is found. Romans used alum to die cloth, preserve leather, and fireproof structures.
As science evolved, so did the use of aluminum. In the 16th century, it began being used in alchemy and was being mixed with other materials creating aluminum alloys. This provided even more benefits depending on the metal it was combined with.
By the 18th century, aluminum became very valuable because of its innovative uses for manufactured goods and electrical properties.
It was discovered that aluminum could be melted and poured into castings or used to create manufactured goods. Creating lightweight and strong materials that offered many benefits.
Fast forward to today, and aluminum is used not only in household manufactured goods, but in aerospace, aviation, architecture, and robotics.
Learn more about the history of aluminum and the scientist behind it in this article from Science History, Aluminum: Common Metal, Uncommon Past.
Aluminum Recycling
Aluminum manufacturers understand the importance of recycling aluminum because of the impact it has on our planet. Most use recycling companies to help repurpose their scrap metal.
Companies wanting to have their products made of aluminum, will not only benefit from the versatility of the metal but also the many recycling benefits.
Approximately 91% of all aluminum parts, in cross-industry averaging, are recycled and returned to the production stream. This is presenting a huge energy saving in new, reclaimed content parts compared to the use of newly mined raw material.
This makes aluminum products more affordable and more environmentally friendly. This helpss reduce a company’s carbon footprint.
“Recycling aluminum saves 90% to 95% of the energy needed to make aluminum from bauxite ore. It doesn’t matter if you’re making aluminum cans, roof gutters or cookware, it is simply much more energy-efficient to recycle existing aluminum to create the aluminum needed for new products than it is to make aluminum from virgin natural resources.” Quote from Treehugger, Sustainability for All. The benfits of Aluminum Recycling , Author Larry West.
Many companies are using more recycled aluminum as well. In a recent blog from The Verg, Author, Justine Calma discusses how celebrities and large corporations are helping push the use of recycled aluminum in her blog “Aluminum is Recyclings New Best Friends, But it’s Complicated.”
We partner with aluminum recycling plants to make sure our company is doing its part in world conservation and reuse of materials.
Aluminum Manufacturing and Your Project
Aluminum manufacturing is important to our day-to-day lives. Because of aluminum, companies like ours are able to use this metal for prototyping, low-volume manufacturing, and aluminum metal castings.
If you need help with your or have questions about the aluminum, or our cast aluminum foundry reach out to our metal experts and engineering specialist.
They are ready to answer all your questions regarding aluminum manufacturing and metal castings.
