Hot Extruded Sections

Hot Extruded Sections

Why extruded profiles?

Steel, Stainless steel and Titanium extrusions provide advantages not offered by alternative methods such as forgings, castings, and machining from bar or plate stock. Economic advantages include minimal tooling costs, reduced material usage, lower parts count resulting from the ability to extrude complex shapes over length in a single operation and less downstream machining and finishing operations. The quality benefits of extrusion include improved surface quality and superior flatness and straightness, which is especially critical for long length structural operations.

Production

MANUFACTURING PROFILES AND TUBES

The first stage of the manufacturing process is hot extrusion with raw material going through tooling at high temperature. Conception and production of all tools are determined by engineers to meet customers’ profile drawings.
Stretching and straightening machines guarantee the straightness with the dimensional accuracy required by the customer.
Controlled heat treatment cycles guarantee the mechanical and metallurgical properties of the product in accordance with the requirements.
The surface of the extrusions can be shot blasted, passivated, galvanized, painted,…

CAPABILITIES & GRADES

Grades
Carbon steel
S235, S275, S355, A36, C10, C20, C45, 1018, 1045, 18 NiCrMo5, 42 CrMo4, 4140, 4340, 8620, etc.
Alloy steels
16MC5, 25CD4, 42CD4, 15CDV6, 16NC6, etc.
Stainless steels
300 & 400 series, 17-4 PH, 15-5 PH, Nitronic 50, Nitronic 60, Duplex grades Monel 400, Alloy 600, A-286, Invar 36

Titanium

TA6V, T40, T60, TA3V2.5

Capabilities
Maximum size
Within diameter <= 250 mm
Minimum thickness
From 3 mm to 25 mm according to the section

Radius

Inside radius: from 3 to 4 mm (-0/+2 mm)

Outside radius: 1.5 mm (± 0.5 mm)

Hot finished sections

  • random or fixed lengths from 5 mm to 12 meters.
  • minimum quantity: 600 Kg

TOLERANCES

on sizes (c) on thickness (t) straightening
c <= 50 mm : ± 0,5 mm

c >= 50 mm : ± 1 %
e <= 5 mm : ± 15 %

e >= 5 mm : ± 10 %
deflection = 1 mm/meter *

twist < 2°/meter to maxi of 8° per bar

* on request

Architecture

Architectural projects require more and more grades in stainless steel that have a good corrosion resistance. In building and architecture for roof, structure, curtain walling, cladding and design, stainless steel guarantees the durability of construction. The aspect and the structure will remain unchanged throughout the years. The choice of material depends on the architect, but also on the building environment, and cost must be taken into consideration.

The application of Lifetime Costing will often demonstrate that the use of stainless steel, initially appearing expensive, is in fact the most economical option.

We can provide profiles in stainless steel, carbon steel or titanium according to customers’ requirements:

  • cupola of Gare St. Lazare – ‘’Metro Meteor’’ in Paris
  • handrail – Ryad airport in Saudi Arabia
  • profiles for privacy louvres – Bibliothèque de France in Paris
  • curtain walling – Post Office , Bonn, Germany
  • guide rails for lifts – Arche de la Défense (Paris)
  • curtain walling – Court building, Ghent, Belgium
  • profiles for duty-free-shops – Brussels airport
  • curtain walling, Air France head office – Technopole Roissy Charles de Gaulle
  • and many more

Mechanicals & Industry

The manufacturing process enables the production of rough bars which are close to final dimensions and in a wide range of shapes and grades.

A personalized study of the customer’s needs by R&D Department is necessary to define the product that will meet all requirements in order to:

  • Achieve lower costs and optimize raw material usage
  • Reduce machining cycles

A range of stainless steels with improved machinability enables us to reach these results.
Low minimum quantities (about 600 Kg per shape) and low tooling costs mean a more flexible process is accessible to major industries.


Application fields: Mechanical parts, tapware industry, linear guides, conveyor systems, farming and food industry, armaments industry…

Energy

Extruded tubing is used across the industry in traditional fossil-fueled plants, waste incineration plants, nuclear plants as well as renewables and natural gas fired plants. Depending on the fuel used in industrial boilers, and according to engineering designs, we produce several types of tubular products adapted for use in high temperatures, corrosion and special service conditions.

Applications:

  • Feedwater Heaters, Condensers, Boiler Tubing, BOP Exchangers, Low and High Pressure Heat Exchangers, Nuclear Instrumentation, Inlet Chillers, Moisture Separator Reheaters, Super heaters, garbage incinerating plants.


Types of products: 

  • Integral finned tubes (longitudinal finned tubes)
  • omega tubes  (Super-omega tubes)
  • Double omega tubes

Aeronautics

Aeronautic extrusions require high specifications with tight tolerances, certifications, continuous product development and a perfect service. This is achieved by carrying out a 100% inspection. The R&D Department works on developing materials. The requirements of the customers are always in the forefront. The products we manufacture can be found either in the structure of the plane or in the jet engine itself as rings.

RINGS

According to the customer’s need, we can provide rough or machined rings for aircraft and helicopter engines:

  • Rolled flash butt welded rings
  • Seamless expanded rings

We provide rings for civil engines (Boeing, Airbus,…) and military aircraft engines such as Mirage or Rafale.
(Note : alternative production possibilities for smaller rings : centrifugal casting)

Cold drawn & rolled profiles

Cold rolled and cold drawn profiles can be produced in wide variety of alloys that include carbon steel, free cutting steel, alloy steel, stainless steel, nickel alloys, high temp alloys, as well as brass and copper alloys.

The profiles range in cross sectional areas that fit within a 125mm diameter circle.

ADVANTAGES

  • Reduce machining time
  • Reduce number of operations
  • Increase productivity
  • Reduce scrap and material waste
  • Minimize cutting tools

Cold draw­ing is a pre­ci­sion reduc­tion of the cross sec­tional area of pre-rolled pro­files or wire rod cold drawn through a series of one or more dies.

Tight tol­er­ances and improved sur­face con­di­tion are two advan­tages of cold drawn stain­less pro­files. In addi­tion, cold draw­ing reduces down­stream machin­ing and over­all fin­ish­ing oper­a­tions.   It also pro­vides dimen­sional con­sis­tency and improved straight­ness. Draw­ing processes tend to inhibit the resid­ual stresses released by the mate­r­ial dur­ing sub­se­quent machin­ing car­ried out by the customer.

Typ­i­cal appli­ca­tions for cold drawn stain­less steel sec­tions include pump parts, valve stems, lin­ear guide rails, sprock­ets, gears, key­ways, splines and spin­dles, tur­bine parts, cur­tain wall, facade con­struc­tion, x-ray equip­ment, lou­vers, and cou­plings.  In short, cold drawn stain­less steel sec­tions are used in areas requir­ing pre­ci­sion tol­er­ances and  a supe­rior finish.

Cold rolled sections are produced by forming round wire rod by a continuous rolling process at ambient temperature. Cold rolling is a very efficient manufacturing process which has been developed mainly for small sections. Compared to hot rolling, cold rolling offers some considerable advantages. Excellent surface finish, tight tolerances and to produce small production lots. Cold rolling provides the ability to change the mechanical properties of the material and produces certain useful combinations of hardness, strength, stiffness and ductility. This is completed by selective annealing. The sections can be supplied either as bars in fixed lengths or can be recoiled. Cold rolled stainless steel sections are used for watch components, food processing, textile, pulp and paper industry as well as petrochemical and nautical components.

Hot rolled profiles

Spe­cial hot rolled stain­less steel, steel and alloy shapes can be formed by form­ing wire rod or billets, which can have a max. width of 110mm, by a con­tin­u­ous rolling process.

This set up allows for high degrees of defor­ma­tion, and thus extremely com­plex shapes can be achieved.

After cutting this raw material to a specific length, it undergoes a warmup process in the oven at  temperatures about 1100°C, then it is descaled with water pressure and later deformed with different passes through several casting tools in hot rolling lines until the desired final shape has been reached. This profile is cooled down and then straightened and cut to the wished length of the customer and finally deburred.

This pro­duc­tion approach for small to mid­size spe­cial geome­tries offers con­sid­er­able cost sav­ings to the cus­tomers thanks to small pro­duc­tion lots and low tool­ing cost.

Hot rolled sec­tions are used for gen­eral build­ing and con­struc­tion, machin­ery, hard­ware, trans­porta­tion indus­try as well as for waste water sys­tems and shipbuilding.

Laser Welded profiles

Laser welding is effi­cient and it offers nearly limitless capa­bil­i­ties and design options. Laser welded sections are pro­duced by weld­ing indi­vid­ual com­po­nents together, creating a com­plete sec­tion. The pieces are typ­i­cally flat laser cut strips, but may also be pre­-fab­ri­cated solids, hol­lows or other shapes. The joints are cre­ated with pow­er­ful lasers with­out any filler mate­r­ial, pro­duc­ing a minute weld bead. Laser welded sections can be produced in car­bon steel, stain­less steel and duplex steel pro­files, among others.

Laser welded sec­tions inher­ently fea­ture sharp edges and gen­er­ally have small radii mea­sur­ing a max­i­mum of 0,5mm. With the use of lasers in laser weld­ing and fus­ing, there is a very small heat affected zone when com­pared to tra­di­tional pro­duc­tion meth­ods. Laser welded sections can be man­u­fac­tured as tees, chan­nels, angles, beams and other sec­tions. Hol­low struc­turals are also avail­able as well as square or rec­tan­gu­lar tubing. These can be made in almost any size with a small min­i­mum order. The com­po­nents can have dif­fer­ent thick­nesses and even dif­fer­ent grades of mate­ri­als fused into one sec­tion.

Our laser welded sections can be pro­duced in quan­ti­ties as small as a single piece for a prototype study, all the way up to quan­ti­ties of 100 tons or more for large scale projects. Most pro­duc­tion con­sists of mate­r­ial laser fused at a 90° angle, but it is pos­si­ble to weld at other angles. Even round mate­ri­als can be joined with flat edges. Some­times it is nec­es­sary to flat­ten the round mate­r­ial at the con­tact point for these custom geometries.

Laser welded stain­less pro­files gen­er­ally have a bet­ter sur­face fin­ish than extruded or hot rolled prod­ucts because the raw com­po­nents are processed from high qual­ity hot rolled plate or from cold drawn flats. Upon being laser welded, the sec­tions are straight­ened, bead blasted and pas­si­vated in an acid solu­tion. Passivating removes any impu­ri­ties introduced during the production process. Angle, channel and box sec­tions are typ­i­cally machined prior to bead blast­ing because they often con­tain exter­nal weld beads. Removing these exter­nal beads makes the finished sur­face flat and even.

The laser welded stain­less sec­tions are very pop­u­lar with landscape architects, interior designers, and furniture designers.