Cold Forging Of Aluminum Alloy

Cold Forging Of Aluminum Alloy

Cold forging, also known as cold extrusion, of aluminum alloy is one of the forming technologies that are growing very fast. As the name suggests, this technology is a direct opposite of the hot forging technology. Unlike the hot extrusion technology where the metal to be formed is heated to 75% of its melting point, cold extrusion forms metals at room temperature. That’s what makes it popular with manufacturers – they don’t need to invest in the heating process.

But that’s not the only reason why cold forging is popular. The technology comes with so many benefits over the hot forging technology, and that’s why it’s growing in popularity. One of these benefits is high precision production. With this forming technology, you can produce near net shapes and sizes. That means the cost of finishing is significantly reduced with cold forging.

The other benefit of the cold forging of aluminum alloy is low material consumption. The technique has a very small wastage of materials there is any. This means you will be saving a lot of aluminum materials. But there are also shortcomings that come with cold extrusion.

One of the limitations is the required high tonnage for the forging of products. With the material in its room temperature, this means the plasticity is very poor compared to heated ones. That’s why you need large tonnage to produce material plasticity. That means you need a larger compressing machine. Other limitations of cold forging include complex mold structure, large deformation resistance, limited materials, and expensive pre-treatment processes.

But most of these technical limitations are being overcome by more development in technology in this field. Cold forging of aluminum is one of the quickly developing cold forging technologies. That’s because the metal overcomes most of the limitations associated with cold extrusion. The extrusion of pure aluminum was one of the first developments.

Pure aluminum has small deformation resistance at room temperature and good plasticity. So it is very easy to deform at room temperature. This makes it an ideal metal for cold forging. But aluminum alloys are also good for cold forging. There are many alloys of aluminum, with most of them can be cold extruded with a lot of ease. Though it could be harder than pure aluminum, they have good plasticity.

A good example of aluminum alloys is rust-proof aluminum, including the 5A02, 3A21, 2A11, 6061, 6082, 2A12, 2A14, 2A50,  and many others. When you compare them with, for example, steel in the de-ignition state, their deformation resistance is smaller. However, the plasticity of most of these alloys is not that good as pure aluminum. This means the end product could easily crack.

But technology is providing solutions to most of the cold forging of aluminum alloy limitations. One of them is the de-ignition and phosphate saponification of the aluminum alloy blanks. The process helps to get rid of friction for smooth forming. Here are other technical measures that are used for making aluminum alloys cold forgeable with ease.

1. a) Aluminum alloys are taken through the de-ignition treatment to help reduce the hardness in the metal. With this treatment, the material plasticity is improved, and that’s how the cold forging force is reduced. But the plasticity of the alloys is determined by the type of metal forming the alloy. For the carbide-aluminum alloys, they are a bit hard, and thus even after de-ignition, the plasticity will still be poor. So, the type of metal used to make these alloys is crucial to consider.
2. b) The hard aluminum alloys are oxidized saponified before being cold extruded. The metal blanks are placed in Sodium hydroxide for about three minutes for their surface to produce crystallized oxide film. The alloy is then heated to about 70C for 30 minutes in the industrial soap and then dried. This will make the cold extrusion of aluminum easier.
3. C) The third technique is the use of soybean oil or vegetable oil. The oil is used as a lubricant, which helps to reduce friction on the metal being extruded.

Cold forging of aluminum alloys has increasingly become popular because of the benefits it offers. That’s because of the many benefits it offers, including producing high-quality and affordable machine parts. If you are interested in cold forging, you can consult Cold Forging China.