News

There can be no better way to celebrate Valentines Day in our industry than with our extruded aluminium heart. Happy Valentines day to everyone from all of us at Inal (2020) Ltd

Inal Metals have been acquired by Sherwood Stainless & Aluminium.

Sherwood are one of the major independent suppliers of aluminium extrusions and aluminium processed components in the UK.

Operating from Wolverhampton, Sherwood’s boast 130,000 square feet of factory space, 24 hour working with a turnover of circa £30 million a year. 

With an enviable record of growth Sherwood will bring many resources to Inal, now trading as Inal (2020) Ltd, proven niche market activity and offer the level of financial, technical and logistical support that will allow it both continuity and growth in the future. 

Here’s a multi-point checklist to help you get the best from your aluminium extrusion supplier. Choose wisely.

Do provide drawings and CAD files with the right technical information. If you can’t do CAD, ensure they can.

Do understand your end application and if there is a general assembly drawing it will help them understand it too; NDA’s permitting.

Do check if they can cut and machine the extrusion for you (if required) and if it’s machined do they have state of the art measuring equipment to ensure compliance

Do your homework. Get recommendations within the industry. Exercise caution when vetting suppliers via the Internet you can appear to be anything on a website. 

Do know how the extrusion is going to be used its mechanical and aesthetic requirements.

Do indicate the visible surfaces (or if none if it isn’t on display).

Don’t select more than 3-4 specialist companies to provide a response.

Don’t judge companies by the speed of their initial response.

Don’t be unrealistic when it comes to finding the balance between having it quickly, inexpensively or at a high quality. You can generally only have any two of these.

Don’t forget to advise drop dates and locations and importantly packing so logistics and handling can be factored into the project timelines.

Don’t buy only on price it always costs more in the long run.

Want more? Download our free Desperately Seeking Aluminium – Aluminium Extrusion Buyers Guide by INAL here.

Creating the Pride Rainbow flag in glorious anodised aluminium a true Inal Metals Hommage to all our colleagues customers suppliers and friends in the LGBT community…INAL extrusions without prejudice

It’s great news to hear about JLR’s investment in electric vehicles…but what’s even greater is being an intrinsic part of the supply change…just off the CMM.  We are proud supporting the environmental aspect of electric vehicles and proud of our employees in producing such amazing parts, in places accurate to 1 micron!

Truly Help for Heroes

Honoured to help the amazing people at Meru https://meru.org.uk with an extruded foot plate for a very specialist wheelchair. 

These extraordinary people engineer small batch products that would never be commercially available helping people with challenging and complex needs.

. 

It is our pleasure to donate the parts and share our expertise with them. We salute you.

Design engineers today demand materials that are simultaneously light, strong and corrosion resistant.

They want materials to meet the structural, thermal, aesthetic and acoustic challenges of the 21st century.

Aluminium is an obvious choice for engineering designers with its unique properties, making it a natural partner for many applications.

Its use, in its extruded form, in a wide range of applications has grown over many years thanks to its strength, durability, corrosion resistance and lightness. Extruded aluminium offers the design engineer the optimum design flexibility. The component shown here allows elderly patients and nurses to operate tricky valves on oxygen cylinders.

Aluminium extrusion is the technique used to transform aluminium alloy, pushed through, what can be intricate and complex dies, into definitive, cross-sectional profiles for a wide range of applications.

Using removable strips to achieve complex shapes or challenging tolerances.

The extrusion process makes the most of aluminium’s unique combination of physical characteristics, specifically, malleability and ductility.

Its ductility allows it to be easily extruded while its malleability allows it to be pressed and formed into complex shapes even after extrusion.

Also, at one third the density and stiffness of steel the resulting products offer exceptional strength and stability making it a popular choice for many designers.

Aluminium extrusions can be found in a diverse range of applications

• Low weight to high strength ratio – aeronautical, marine, railway stock, automotive.

• High conductivity of heat and electricity – air conditioning, radiators, heatsinks, electronics.

• Corrosion resistance – mining, architectural, marine, military, cables and wires.

Aluminium extrusion is often the most viable solution that meets the specific manufacturing needs of design flexibility, cost savings, and product performance.

Want more? Download our free Desperately Seeking Aluminium – Aluminium Extrusion Buyers Guide by INAL here.

At INAL we’ve done thousands of dies over the years many to very tight deadlines. So tasked in the week leading up to Easter to produce a new die with machined samples within 10 working days during a period of tool maker shutdowns proved too big a challenge to decline. Fantastic performance from everyone involved and hey presto in 9 working days…job done!

In recognition of our best first quarter in many a year star performer Sarah Lyon added to her impressive tattoo collection with a discreet triumvirate of our ornithological friends recently; see photo. No doubt further indicative of our phoenix like revival in recent months …Sarah we salute you! https://www.facebook.com/InalMetals/

Continuing our series on deconstructing the aluminium extrusion process, this post looks at the cooling, stretching, cutting and heat treating required to produce the profiles you need.

The billet ‘butt’ that remains from extrusion creation oxides from the billet skin. The butt is sheared off and discarded while another billet is loaded and welded to a previously loaded billet and the extrusion process continues.

When the extrusion reaches a desired length, the extrusion is cut with a profile saw or a shear.

Metal is transferred (via belt or walking beams systems) from the run-out table to the cooling table.

After the aluminium has cooled and moved along the cooling table, it is then moved to the stretcher.

Stretching straightens the extrusions and performs ‘work hardening’ (molecular re-alignment which gives aluminium increased hardness and improved strength).

The next step is sawing. After extrusions have been stretched they are transferred to a saw table and cut to specific lengths. The cutting tolerance on saws is 1/8 inch or greater, depending on saw length.

After the parts have been cut, they are loaded on a transportation device and moved into age ovens.

Heat-treating or artificial aging hardens the metal by speeding the aging process in a controlled temperature environment for a set amount of time.

Want more? Download our free Desperately Seeking Aluminium – Aluminium Extrusion Buyers Guide by INAL here.