THE place to get billet Aluminum

[Jersey Tom]

Alreco Aluminum Surplus Supply, in Denver (Henderson).

Phone: 303-287-7210
Fax: 303-286-8622

Bob has pretty much whatever aluminum you could want. Pretty sure he ships it out as well. You might think having to pay shipping wouldn't make it much better than McMaster or Online Metals or whatever..

What would have been $1600+ for 95lb of billet aluminum from Online Metals or McMaster.. $833.50 from Alreco. Included about a square foot of 1" 6061, 4 square feet of .75" 7075, a square foot of .25" 7075, about a square foot and a half of 1.5" 7075, and a square foot of .625" 7075. No idea how he sells it that cheap but we've used Alreco for years and have had no problems.

Figured I'd share..

Edit - One catch, doesn't take credit card. Cash or PO.

[Jersey Tom]

Alreco Aluminum Surplus Supply, in Denver (Henderson).

Phone: 303-287-7210
Fax: 303-286-8622

Bob has pretty much whatever aluminum you could want. Pretty sure he ships it out as well. You might think having to pay shipping wouldn't make it much better than McMaster or Online Metals or whatever..

What would have been $1600+ for 95lb of billet aluminum from Online Metals or McMaster.. $833.50 from Alreco. Included about a square foot of 1" 6061, 4 square feet of .75" 7075, a square foot of .25" 7075, about a square foot and a half of 1.5" 7075, and a square foot of .625" 7075. No idea how he sells it that cheap but we've used Alreco for years and have had no problems.

Figured I'd share..

Edit - One catch, doesn't take credit card. Cash or PO.

[Kerry]

That still sounds pretty steep... we just bought 370 lb of 6061 billet for $740. McMaster is never the place to go unless you need it tomorrow and probably have some other dire thing going on.

[Jersey Tom]

370lb?? Jesus. You machining your whole car out of a solid block of aluminum or what.

[drivetrainUW-Platt]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jersey Tom:
370lb?? Jesus. You machining your whole car out of a solid block of aluminum or what. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thats what I was thinking, we had maybe 15lbs of billet parts on our car last year...money must be nice to have!

[J. Vinella]

I cannot find a price for 2090 anywhere.

Tom, do you know if Alreco sells this stuff? Or anybody know of a supplier?

[nickerss]

What in the world are you guys making out of such huge chunks of aluminum??

[Jersey Tom]

Ahh, 2090. Good stuff, was lookin at that a couple years ago. The aluminum-lithium alloys are very cool.

2090 at the moment isn't made in anything but thin sheet, not plate or bar stock. Don't think Alreco has any, but you could give Bob a call. If he doesn't have it he might know where to look.

Availability has been extremely scarce past couple years with Boeing and defense contractors buying up ridiulous amounts of high strength aluminum and carbon. Same goes for 7068 and 7475 (which are available in bar stock). For a while even 7075 was hard to find in some sizes but I think the aluminum industry is rebounding now.

Edit - and $780 for 370lb of any sort of aluminum is CRAZY cheap. $8-10 per lb of alloy wrought aluminum is pretty standard, $4-6 from Alreco I thought was great.. $2-3/lb is nuts.

[the weldmeister]

why are so many teams going for 6061, when 7075 is so much stronger? is it prohibitively expensive or is there something i'm missing?

[Jersey Tom]

Strength isn't everything.

Some parts might be defined by some geometric constraint such that it has to be so big that 6061 or 7075 will give adequate strength. In that case, 6061 is cheaper.

A part that is designed for stiffness and has a high FOS anyway, 6061 will do.

6061 is weldable..

[the weldmeister]

however big the part is, you'll always be able to save weight by using a stronger material (7075). So while both will give adequate strength, you'll save weight with 7075.

Weldability would not matter at all in parts like bell cranks, uprights, pedals etc. as long as the design is efficient.

I'm just wondering thats all...

[Charlie]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by the weldmeister:
however big the part is, you'll always be able to save weight by using a stronger material (7075). So while both will give adequate strength, you'll save weight with 7075. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's simply not true. If that was the case then steel would be always used.

[Jersey Tom]

Indeed. If you have a part, like an upright, that needs to (a) not break and (b) meet some stifness criteria, typically parts designed for stiffness exceed strength requirements. Since the two have the same elastic modulus, the cheaper alloy is the way to go.

Or take something non stressed, like a dry sump pan we machined. Its essentially not loaded. For machinability we gave it a .150" or so wall thickness. Makes no difference for 61 or 75, so again the cheaper alloy is the way to go.

[Kerry]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jersey Tom:
370lb?? Jesus. You machining your whole car out of a solid block of aluminum or what. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ha! No, actually none of that 370 lb of Al is for parts for the car. It's going to become compliance test fixtures (my senior design). I'm pretty sure we've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-12 lb of Al on the car.

[Jersey Tom]

Mind if I ask where you got it so unbelievably cheap?

[BeaverGuy]

Where I work anything above $5 is considered expensive for aluminum. And $7 is considered outrageous. A couple weeks ago we bought about 20,000 lbs of 8" square 0.5" wall 6061T6 tubing for about $2.50/lb where as one local vendor wanted upwards of $7/lb. Even when we don't buy in those quantities we still get good prices. I bought a 130lb plate of 6061T6 for about $4/lb this summer. Part of this probably has to due with us being located in the NW and being local to alot of smelters, however we bought the tubing from somewhere in Alabama I believe.

[the weldmeister]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">That's simply not true. If that was the case then steel would be always used. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

i thought high strength al alloys like 7075 had greater strength to weight ratios than alloy steels. but then again, i know nothing much about material properties.

[Jersey Tom]

Interesting, Josh. Though, when you're buying 20,000lb you'd think you'd get a good "case" discount.

Weld - Depends. There are some steels that get up to about 300ksi tensile strength. Crazy strong.

[Azim]

A fringe benefit of being in the "Air Capital of the World" is a place called, simply, The Yard. Check out photos of their stock here: http://www.yardstore.com/index.cfm?action=StockPhotos ... You don't always know what you're getting, but oftentime the material still has some markings on it. Handy when it's a 10 minute drive from our university.

[Buckingham]

I recommend trying machine shops. They often have 'drops' that are extra material left over from jobs. Our sponsor believes that we are doing them a favor by clearing out their scrap barn. They were going to get rid of 8 ft of 6" dia 4340 round stock as scrap steel. That turned out to be about 4 years of hub material for our team (including spares) that we got for free.

Also Speedy Metals in New Berlin, WI sells drops that they buy from manufacturers. They are very reasonbly priced and have an Ebay Store (just search Speedy Metals).

[Kerry]

We got it from a metal yard in south Jersey. Joseph Fazzio's Co., Inc. in Glassboro.

http://www.josephfazzioinc.com/

We use them for most of our aluminum and a lot of our steel because they are only a 30 min drive from Drexel.

[jeff-NIUMS]

We just got about 200lbs of aluminum from Fortal at a great price. This guy is great to deal with. It also helps that he's so close to us. So, anyone in the midwest should definitely buy from this guy.

www.fortal.biz (http://www.fortal.biz)

[denn]

While it might not be of concern for billet machined type components, 6061 is often the choice over 7005 in industry for tubing type applications. The reason being that 7005's high alloy content makes manipulation more difficult. 6061 is easily butted and tapered, and remember geometry plays as much of a roll in a "strong" design as the material's strength does.