Natural ageing : Process parameters and temperature impact on natural ageing of aluminium profiles

Sammanfattning: It has been found that profiles delivered to customers in unaged (T4) statehave had different hardnesses despite using the same manufacturing process.It has emerged that the material have been stored different periods oftime before use and therefore have small variations in hardness. In furtherprocessing this may lead to problems. This is observed in the alloys 6005,6060 and 6063 despite the same process parameters, such as extrusion speed,heating and cooling. In order to facilitate the extrusion, natural ageing curves have been constructed.The different process parameters in the press are also investigated,as well as the affect of natural ageing and a comparison of the alloys 6005,6060 and 6063 to see how different alloys are affected by natural ageing. It was found that natural ageing increases the hardness of all profiles regardlessof composition or process parameters. Different profiles gave differenthardness increases. The process parameters were affected positively by thecomposition of Si and Mg while Fe contamination may have affected the parameters.The result have also shown that the alloy with highest content ofSi and Mg also where the hardest.