Our Related CNC Aluminum Machining Capability
RapidDone has wide-expertise in manufacturing custom aluminum machined parts. As a top on-demand parts supplier in China, we are your ideal provider of outstanding CNC manufacturing services to delight your customers.
Why Aluminum CNC Machining Services With RapidDone?
As one of the leading machining suppliers in China, RapidDone builds a well-train team including an experienced engineer team, sales team over ten years. With our rich skills and professional services, we keep expanding our business all the way, this enables us to meet the increasing demand of the CNC machining industry.
With more than 30+ in-house aluminum CNC machines including some precision 5-axis CNC machines and turning machines, we are capable of creating all kinds of manufacturing processes to create all kinds of parts.
With the support of our engineering team, we have a very strong custom manufacturing capability to meet our customer’s preferences. Over the years, we have manufactured thousands of aluminum machined components and parts, those are aluminum handle, housing, medical bracket, and more. Among them, some are with very complex shapes, which can be manufactured with our 5-axis precision machining easily.
RapidDone offers a full range of raw materials from standard grade alloys like 5052 to high-quality grades like 7075, we can handle all machining project with different aluminum alloys.
As an on-demand factory, we can offer aluminum prototyping with a quantity as small as one piece. The prototype part can be finished as fast as several days with all kinds of quality surface requirements.
In short, we are the expert for your aluminum rapid prototyping or low-volume orders. If you have a manufacturing requirement for a custom aluminum project, feel free to contact us today.
Why Aluminum For CNC Machining?
CNC machining is the most popular manufacturing process. It is compatible with a wide range of materials including almost all metal materials and plastic materials. Among them, aluminum is the most wildly used material due to several advantages below.
Here are five reasons:
First, it has very good machinability properties. Therefore, this material is more easily removed by the cutting tool, which means the cutting efficiency is higher and machining time is lower.
Secondly, aluminum has a big family of alloys. Each different alloy has a different distinct and unique property. Therefore, they are suited to a number of machining applications across all industries, covering automotive, aerospace, consumer electronics, and more.
Thirdly, this type of material can be anodized easily. This oxidized outer layer is resistant to corrosion, which is ideal for a lot of applications.
Fourthly, the price is relatively affordable compared to other metal materials like stainless steel, copper, titanium.
Lastly, CNC machining can also be used to modify other aluminum parts such as extrusion parts, die casting parts, forging parts, which come from other manufacturing processes. With the help of CNC machining, it can complement the defect of extrusion, casting, and forging processes.
At RapidDone, aluminum is the most commonly used material in our shop. More than 70% of our CNC machining projects use this type of metal material.
The Common Machines For Aluminum Machining
Depends on different applications, different types of CNC machines are used for aluminum machining.
The most typical types are CNC milling machine, CNC cutting machine, CNC router, and CNC turning machine.
Besides, the desktop aluminum CNC machine is also popular which includes 3018 CNC aluminum, CNC 3020 aluminum, and 3040 CNC aluminum machines.
The Three Typical CNC Machining Processes
1. CNC Laser Cutting Process
CNC laser cutting is wildly used to cut the aluminum material into size, especially for big size aluminum sheet and aluminum tube.
2. CNC Milling Process
Milling is the most important process for aluminum machining, it is ideal to be used to create a complex aluminum part.
3. CNC Turning Process
Turning machining is best suited to cut circular aluminum workpiece such as an aluminum pipe. By using this process, we can create an aluminum part with very high efficiency.
What Are The Common Aluminum Alloys For CNC Machining?
This type of material refers to pure aluminum mixed with other elements such as iron, magnesium, copper, and more. Due to different mixture and composition, it turns into a lot of different grades.
There are mainly five types that are widely used for CNC machining in our shop.
1. Aluminum 2024
This alloy is a copper-alloyed material and the major alloying element is copper.
It had an excellent strength-to-weight ratio, high strength, good fatigue resistance. The disadvantages, on the other hand, are terrible corrosion resistance and poor weldability capability.
This material is suitable to be used in aerospace, automotive, transportation applications that need a high strength-to-weight ratio.
2. Aluminum 3003
This alloy is a manganese-alloyed material and the major alloying element is manganese.
It is ideal to be used in household goods like cooking equipment, chemical equipment, tanks, and more.
3. Aluminum 5052
Aluminum 5052 alloy contains several alloying elements including magnesium, chromium, and others.
It has good resistance to corrosion and stands well for saltwater. It is a perfect material for sheet metal fabrication including cutting, bending, stamping.
This alloy is well suited for the Marine, aircraft, oil, and gas industries.
4. Aluminum 6061
This alloy mainly contains two alloying elements including magnesium and silicon.
It has the best mechanical properties and good weldability. Also, it has cool anodization which makes it be the best material option for extrusion application.
At RapidDone, this material is the most common material for CNC machining for both rapid prototype and volume production.
5. Aluminum 7075
Aluminum 7075 is a zinc-alloyed material and the major alloying element is zinc.
This alloy has a very high tensile strength at 83,000 psi, so it is wildly used for highly stressed structural applications.
What Are The Common CNC Machined Aluminum Parts?
As the most popular material for the CNC machining process, aluminum is the first selection for many metal parts and components.
Below are the common aluminum parts that come from the CNC machining process.
- Auto Parts
- Aircraft Parts
- Electronic Enclosures
- Structural components
- Transportation industry parts
- Medical Devices
- Engine Parts
- Moldings
The Recommended Aluminum Machining Tips
Aluminum is a soft and ductile metal material with high thermal conductivity. This leads to two limitations. One is that it can be cut easily off with long chips. The other limitation is susceptible to heat build-up.
To make smooth milling, we need to take some milling tips to avoid the limitations. In fact, if you use the correct machining tips, you can run very successful machining with a more productive result.
1: Run A Precise Feed Rate
For aluminum machining, you have tighter windows than other materials for the feeds and speeds, it easily hits the limits of your machine’s capabilities. Therefore, it is suggested to use the speeds and feeds calculator online to figure out the right numbers for the feeds and speeds.
2: Take A Right Cutter
By using a smaller diameter cutter, you can bump up the RPMs while cutting aluminum. As you are going for smaller diameters, you need rigid cutters that help you to avoid tool deflection issues.
Use the right cutting tool such as a carbide cutting tool with fewer flutes when handling the long unbroken aluminum chips.
3: Get A Fewer Cutter
A router machine creates large chips easily when machining aluminum, which can cause your machine to jam. To get better control of this, it is better to use a tool with fewer flutes less than three flutes.
4: Use Carbide Endmills
Compared with HSS cutters and Cobalt cutters, carbide cutters can go much faster, it can easier to bump up the recommended RPMs that you need for routing aluminum.
5: Set Proper coolant Flow
Proper coolant flow can help to move the heat away quickly.
Get Your Aluminum Project Started Today
Our engineers are ready to work with you to make sure you get quality aluminum parts. When you submit your design files, we will check all the details including manufacturability, function, cost based on our experience. Talk to us today about your aluminum machining project, and we will get back a good answer for your request.