Welcome to the Alu-Scout^® Material Generator

The purpose of the Material Generator is to enable the aluminium processor or the designer of aluminium components to select materials in a manner that is simple yet as fitting as possible.

Please use Alu-Scout^® MaterialSearch if you are looking for the properties of an aluminium alloy of which you know the name.

In developing the Material Generator, the aim was to incorporate all material properties known to us so as not to withhold any information from the user. However, not all properties are known for each alloy so unfortunately a search might possibly reveal fewer alloys than might actually be the case. For example, the polishability is only known for some casting alloys so that no wrought alloys will be shown if this property is given as a requirement. Wrought alloys can, of course, also be polished and in any case would theoretically have a polishability rating greater than zero (inadequate).

The diverse selection criteria of the Material Generator are subdivided into ten property categories, each of which contains a number of properties that can be selected.

After one or more properties have been chosen, a narrowing down of the number of possible alloys takes place so that the optimal alloy for the application in question can be determined. Basically one should only choose those properties that are really necessary because there is, of course, no single alloy that meets all the requirements.

The properties of an alloy are markedly dependent on heat treatment, so alloys usually appear in the list several times, with different tempers.

Uses of the Material Generator

The Material Generator can be used in almost every company that processes aluminium in some way or other: whether it be foundries, extrusion plants, companies that machine aluminium or even service providers, such as anodising plants or welding shops.

Let us put ourselves in the position of a CNC machine operator who has an order to machine parts in aluminium. The customer wants a tensile strength of more than 301 MPa (or N/mm²), an alloy that can be satisfactorily hard anodized for wear protection and also welded in a satisfactory manner, at least in a protective atmosphere, because the parts have to be welded on. Of course, the CNC machine operator himself wants an alloy that is readily machinable (short chips and parts with good surface finish after machining). And the material has to be a wrought alloy because no casting should be carried out. If we now enter the specified properties, the result we obtain is the alloy AlZn4,5Mg1 in the T5 and T6 tempers.

No responsibility is accepted for the correctness of the data shown by the Material Generator!