Sourcing aluminum

[PeterT]

I recently bought some aluminum corners and sheets of aircraft grade aluminum from some guy. He assured me that it was real aircraft grade aluminum.

Alex, 'aircraft grade' could mean almost anything. The alloy properties like strength, density, modulus, heat treatment, extruded/rolled/cast/forged/weldability... and price have a big say in what the component will be made from whether its a door hinge or critical engine mount. If you got a good deal & are happy for your application then that's all that matters. But just know that usually people source & compare based on a defined alloy. Here are some common ones but I'm sure a more extensive list is in the hundreds.
https://www.aircraftspruce.ca/menus/me/aluminum.html

 

[PeterT]

Great! Does he have any more? LOL I'm not interested in sheet but discount solids will always find a welcome home.

 

[Dabbler]

you got a great deal!! 7075 aluminum is a great material to work with (if you aren't welding it).

 

[PeterT]

you got a great deal!! 7075 aluminum is a great material to work with (if you aren't welding it).

good point & same for 2024 apparently


then theres annodizing issue if thats a consideration
https://www.metalsupermarkets.com/what-aluminum-alloys-can-be-anodized/

 

[Janger]

He sold corners, sheets and cylinders 5-7 inches in diameter. He recently sold a top hat to the guys in the workshop. Today I went and bought the remaining sheets of aluminum. He has nothing else. If anyone is wondering how I found out that my aluminum sheets are grade 7075. Then my friend helped me with this. He works for .He scanned my metal for me for free. Something like a pistol with a screen.

@AlexCaffe where do you live?
Are you doing SEO for clients? We don’t allow that. Please reply.

 

[Janger]

A few people have asked me what seo is. Seo is search engine optimization. Ie placing links to sites in our forum to improve their ranking on Google. Ie spammers. I almost don't even care about the post to a link - like the one above (well Josh deleted it). What drives me insane is pretending to be somebody and basically just BSing their way to 4 posts, depositing their turd, and never seen again. The nice thing about hitting the SPAM button is it bans them from our forum - the site won't work from that location again and it reports that IP address to all the other xenforo based forums and there are thousands of them. It's part of why we don't tend to get that much spam because the other admin's ban them first. They're getting sneakier though. That guy knew something about metal work. I just hit the spam button on him.

I'm sure his name wasn't Alex, that wasn't his picture, his email was something like alex46@gmail. he's on his 46th email address in other words. his posts came from somewhere in the Ukraine. All that crap he wrote about aluminium was BS and he didn't buy any metal or have his shop buy a metal top hat whatever the hell that is. ok rant over...

 

[Dabbler]

His deal on sheets had 2 flaws: 7075 sheet is like unobtanium, and his price was 10 cents on the dollar cheap. Almost scrap price. I wondered about metal 'top hat'.

 

[Janger]

His deal on sheets had 2 flaws: 7075 sheet is like unobtanium, and his price was 10 cents on the dollar cheap. Almost scrap price. I wondered about metal 'top hat'.

How common is this sort of thing on hobby machinist Dabbler?

 

[Dabbler]

We haven't had the pleasure, as we disallow external commercial references unless targeted to the subject matter. None of the spammers have found out how to break our code, yet.

 

[DPittman]

Well thank you to those people that keep the site clean of the garbage detailed above. I didn't even have a clue what stuff goes on but I appreciate the people that do all the behind the scenes work.
Also thank you for explaining that particular post did not make sense cuz I sure the he'll didn't understand what he was talking about and I was feeling dumb.

 

[Janger]

We haven't had the pleasure, as we disallow external commercial references unless targeted to the subject matter. None of the spammers have found out how to break our code, yet.

That seems very sophisticated. How do you do that? What is the approach? So if I wanted to put in a reference to federal metals dot com then what happens?

 

[Dabbler]

Our members help us a lot here. it is a totally manual system. It is a membership rule against self linking for commercial purposes unless you pay the commercial membership fee. People link to commercial things all the time, in context, and as appropriate. If any link seems dodgy or commercial by a non-commercial member, it usually gets reported by a member. We get about 5 false positives a month. The Mods (there are 16 of us) also scan the new postings, and we catch unacceptable links also

Now all this is in light of the fact we have only 2 or 3 dodgy links a month, in about 1800 posts. If it gets reported then a second link by a member gets the user banned. We use the same Xenforo reporting system as you guys do.

The scam artists that are offering a perfect item at reasonable price and disappear are more of a problem right now. To combat that , we have made a 10 post minimum before anyone can use the trading post or classifieds... We've only had one scam since.

 

[Dabbler]

Oh - and I forgot. we have an anti-SPAM add-in that Nelson installed many years ago. it looks up some SPAM site and disallows it if it is suspect. we get about 4 complaints about it per month.

 

[Swharfin']

Hmm I have to admit I'm not tech savy at all. I wondered about John's Post off and on today Thanks for the explanation.
Top Hats off to y'all.

 

[Former Member]

I stock some sizes of Aluminium 6061 bar, rod and tube. I buy in bulk (and import if needed) typically a 200lbs and up so I get great pricing, let me get through the holidays and I'll think about offering up on my site. Please be aware I use it for business and don't mind giving deals but I do need to make a small profit.

 

[fluffy]

i have been getting it at Steel Inc. They are great.

 

[YYCHM]

This is interesting......



The website link in the RH panel takes you here https://canadianhobbymetalworkers.com/threads/steel-inc.521/????

 

[Janger]

I guess Google thought that was the most relevant content - funny that. I hit the suggest an edit button and put in the link to his facebook page instead.

 

[LenVW]

Ryerson Metals have sites across Canada.
Mississauga, Edmonton, Calgary, etc
I dealt with them to purchase a lot of aluminum in the past.
They were under the name . . . Integris Metals back in 2005.

 

[architect]

Ryerson Metals have sites across Canada.
Mississauga, Edmonton, Calgary, etc
I dealt with them to purchase a lot of aluminum in the past.
They were under the name . . . Integris Metals back in 2005.

How do you find their prices/availablity/services vs the MSM for home hobbiests? I'm about 45min from Mississauga in Scarborough and looking for a place that's priced better than MSM. I'm willing to buy a bit larger quantities to make the drive worth it as well. Any other sources you recommend in the region? This is for metal in general.