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Spinning aluminum

6061 T6 can be formed quite successfully.
Both tube and flat stock.
I do it frequently.
The key is to spot anneal the part you want to form.
You don't need to form it hot or anneal the whole part.
When the aluminum stops wanting to move anneal it again.
A layer of candle soot and the stove top gas burner works well for small items.
6061 T6 after annealing, forming and then aging will regain much of its strength.
Even 7075 T0 forms well but needs to be heat treated after forming.
 
This thing was 1 of 2 that left the factory with this engine, the thing was huge it made a big block look small.
Well damn, learn something new, I thought the Aston came along ten years later, but the innernuts says they had the thing in 1969.

I guess there weren't enough to go around, so they put a couple in an M8 :) Was yours the one with the stickyup edges on the corners ?
 
Somebody here must do some metal spinning????

Yaaz.. Set of six bright aluminum casual cups for me Mum. Right close to Hillborn injector trumpet shape, too. Solid bottom, not open, of course!

Decided the fruit juice would tast odd and the rims not be mouth-friendly, so went ahead and fabbed Alumnum scroll and cut hanging chains with soft rivits to make it into a planter for Ivy or such. Which died. Mum still had it when she passed away five years back. Artifical flowers had outlived her.

3500 RPM I THINK. Form was maple but I had not made it. It was one of the "store bought" ones the school already had, and it was made with a removable center and six flower-petal sections so as to be easier to remove onct the cup was spun tightly to it.

I had:

= A wooden broomstick handle, polished and beeswaxed

= A roller tool, basically the outer race of a ball-bearing mounted in the split-end of a steel bar

= A polished, round solid bar with a sort of lopsided end kinda like an oversized copy of the ball of a person's thumb.

= Plenty of beeswax

You do the initial start to shape from flat discs sliced on sheet-metal machinery we had to do the initial "spinning on air" to start to shape.

Each cup needed annealed three or four times. No klew waht alloy though. If not three times, they wrinkled, as one did do.

Wudda been ninth grade also ... and not that far up the road - McMurray PA,
60-odd years ago?

Cat's pajamas long-since is hydroforming with an explosive charge, which can do all manner of complex shapes spinning cannot do, and in more alloys, including stainless & titanium as for airliners or railcar seats.
 








 
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