Aluminum rods are cylindrical aluminum shapes. As opposed to aluminum tubes and pipes, which are hollow, aluminum rods are solid. They are used in the construction industry as shafts, railings, stakes and tines, as well as in many other industries for many other purposes. These simple shapes are produced from heated aluminum billets by extrusion under high pressure through a die that has a round shape.
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Aluminum rods are similar to bars, but they differ in the variety of shapes they can take. Rods are the basic round shape, while bars may be square, rectangular, triangular, flat and hexagonal. Because the use of the word "rod" is not exclusive to one shape, many different aluminum products can be described as rods. They can be finished aluminum products, or they can be the stock aluminum shapes sent by aluminum suppliers to metalworking companies. Finished aluminum rod products can be narrow poles used as sign posts. Wider aluminum rods can be used as structural elements, either decorative or strictly functional, in building construction. In the context of metalworking, an aluminum rod can be more than a foot in diameter with a weight of several tons. In such cases, one aluminum rod can be machined, extruded, spun or otherwise formed into many smaller products for use in a wide variety of applications.
Billets made from aluminum, which are semi-finished bar stock, go through extrusion to become rod-shaped. They are heated to 900°F, placed in an extrusion press and drawn. Drawing refers to pushing the billet through a steel die by a large, hard metal ram under pressure. They are often pushed through consecutively smaller dies multiple times in order to reduce their cross section a little at a time. Larger rods can only be extruded once, while small rods are often put through the process more than twice. Liquid nitrogen is often poured after the rod is extruded to cool the temperature. Although many rods do not require cold working, those that do exhibit an improved surface finish and dimensional tolerances. Aluminum rods are just one example of the many basic shapes offered by aluminum suppliers to their clients. These shapes include sheets, tubes, pipes and plates in addition to many others.
