Elements Of An Aluminum Extrusion Die Design

The aluminum extrusion process can be used to produce a wide range of shapes. You may be most familiar with standard shapes such as angles, channels, and tubes — all of which are commonly available from extruders and distributors. However, the flexibility of the extrusion process gives product designers the opportunity to create a wide range of custom profiles for applications in the architectural, automotive, electronics, and other industries. An extrusion die is a thick steel disk with an opening — and malleable aluminum alloy passes through it during the extrusion process. The opening in the die matches the cross-sectional profile that’s specified by the extrusion designer.

After nearly 10 years of rapid growth, the aluminum profile industry has entered a new stage of development and has shown many new development trends. And with the rapid development of construction, transportation, industry, automobile, solar energy, and LED industries, the requirements for high precision and high performance of aluminum alloy extrusion products are increasing day by day, and the cross-sectional shape of the profile is complicated and diversified. There are many shortcomings in the design, so to get high-quality profiles, you must constantly learn, accumulate, constantly transform, and innovate in production and life. Mold design is an important link, so a systematic analysis of extrusion profile mold design is required. And gradually solve the problem through production practice.

The size and deviation of the extruded parts are determined by the mold, extrusion equipment, and other related process factors. Among them, it is greatly affected by the change in the size of the mold, and the reasons for the change in the size of the mold are the elastic deformation of the mold, the temperature rise of the mold, the material of the mold, the manufacturing accuracy of the mold, and the wear of the mold. When calculating the die hole size, the chemical composition of the extruded aluminum alloy, the shape of the product, the nominal size and its allowable tolerance, the extrusion temperature, and the linear expansion coefficient of the mold material and the extruded alloy at this temperature, the product cross-section is mainly considered The characteristics of the geometric shape and its changes during stretching and straightening, the size of the extrusion force and the elastic deformation of the die and other factors.

Generally speaking, the thinner the wall thickness somewhere in the profile, the greater the perimeter, the more complicated the shape, and the farther away from the center of the extrusion barrel, the shorter the sizing zone. When it is still difficult to control the flow rate with a sizing belt, the shape is particularly complicated, the wall thickness is very thin, and the part far away from the center can use a flow angle or a material guide cone to accelerate the metal flow. On the contrary, for those parts with much larger wall thickness or very close to the center of the extrusion cylinder, the obstruction angle should be used to supplement the obstruction to slow down the flow velocity here. In addition, you can also use process balance holes, process margins, or use anterior chamber mold, diversion mold, change the number, size, shape, and position of the distribution hole to adjust the metal flow rate.