Capabilities: Aluminum Extrusion: Tooling & Design

Mid-States Aluminum Corp. designs profiles to meet your exact needs.

Early involvement in the design process allows us to work with your design staff to meet the toughest design challenges. Whether your part requires solid, semi-hollow or hollow profiles, we can create the proper tooling to meet the fit, form and function required for your parts to perform. We strive to provide recommendations that can save you time and money.

Our recommendations include consideration of:

• circle size and profile shape
• selecting the right alloy for optimum formability and strength
• understanding of wall thickness and transitions to enhance surface appearance or minimize surface imperfections
• incorporation of screw bosses in extrusion profiles to reduce tooling costs and reduce metal content for greater economy

Tooling Comparison

A SOLID profile is an extruded shape that does not have any voids or semi-hollow conditions. This covers a wide range, including: compact cross-sections with or without projections, angular or curved shapes and wrap-around shapes whose void area/gap ratios are too low for the semi-hollow-class.

A SEMI-HOLLOW profile is one that partially encloses a void, for example, a circle or rectangle with a gap in one side. However, a solid shape can also partially enclose a void, and the difference may not be obvious. It is defined mathematically by comparing the area of the partially enclosed void to the size of the gap (to the mathematical square of the gap size). If that ratio is larger than a pre-defined number, the shape is classified as semi-hollow; if the ratio is smaller, the shape is considered a solid.

A HOLLOW profile is any extruded shape that contains a completely enclosed void anywhere in its cross-section. The void itself may have any sort of shape and the complete profile may include a variety of other forms. More than one void may be extruded into a profile.