Glueing Aliminium

[Twister_Ken]

I have a slight crack in a non-structural aliminium casting (actually a manufacturing weld has cracked). Rather than having it welded up I wondered if there's an epoxy (or other) glue/filler that anyone would suggest for the job?

 

[Birdseye]

phone lotus cars - they glue the elise together, aircraft fashion.

 

[fdmarsden]

J B Weld.

I bought some from a riverboat/outboard dealer in Abingdon; he had used it, successfully, to repair a cracked outboard crankcase.

 

[fishermantwo]

I like Devcon. The ordinary "plastic steel" version would do in this case. I have had more success with this product than with JB weld. For more extreme repairs you can go to Devcon titanium putty but we are talking serious money here.

The trick is to abraid the area just before glueing and make sure its clean and grease free. Pressure pack brake cleaner is ideal for this.

 

[floatything]

In the UK I believe this is called Chemical Metal. It is MUCH faster than JB weld (about 10 mins) and seems just as effective. I have used it to repair a crankcase on an old BSA 650 and even the cylinder head on a Bantam.. one of the cylinder head bolt holes had stripped - I filled it with CM, shoved the stud back on and - it lasted for years until I sold it.
Now it seems to be sold by Plastic Padding.

HTH Floatything

 

[William_H]

yes aircraft are built and repaired with epoxy. (combined with various fibres) The real challenge and success for a strong grip is in cleaning of the surfaces.
You might need a high temp epoxy if the component gets hot. Other wise just clean it up and pour it in. Warming the component (a little) would be helpfull. olewill

 

[cliff]

[ QUOTE ]
I have a slight crack in a non-structural aliminium casting (actually a manufacturing weld has cracked).

[/ QUOTE ]Never heard of "aliminium" so can not offer advice. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
--------------------

When was the last time you visited ???? /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif.

 

[john_morris_uk]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I have a slight crack in a non-structural aliminium casting (actually a manufacturing weld has cracked).

[/ QUOTE ]Never heard of "aliminium" so can not offer advice. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
--------------------

When was the last time you visited ???? /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif.

[/ QUOTE ]Is it related to the American metal Alooominnum?

 

[Birdseye]

Interestingly, aluminum (US style) was the name given to the metal when it was first discovered, or so I was told in school. So its us, not the Yanks, who have the funny word for it. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[wagenaar]

I was told it was the opposite. The metal was first made in Europe and when it came to the States the last "i" was left out by mistake and never recovered. The ore, bauxite, is named after Les Baux de Provence in France, where it was first found officially. It therefore seems to make sense that the metal was first made in Europe

 

[cliff]

Aluminium is the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust and constitutes 7.3% by mass. In nature however it only exists in very stable combinations with other materials (particularly as silicates and oxides) and it was not until 1808 that its existence was first established. It took many years of painstaking research to "unlock" the metal from its ore and many more to produce a viable, commercial production process.

Key dates
1808 Sir Humphry Davy (Britain) established the existence of aluminium and named it.

1821 P. Berthier (France) discovers a hard, reddish, clay-like material containing 52 per cent aluminium oxide near the village of Les Baux in southern France. He called it bauxite, the most common ore of aluminium.

1825 Hans Christian Oersted (Denmark) produces minute quantities of aluminium metal by using dilute potassium amalgam to react with anhydrous aluminium chloride, and distilling the resulting mercury away to leave a residue of slightly impure aluminium.

1827 Friedrich Wöhler (Germany) describes a process for producing aluminium as a powder by reacting potassium with anhydrous aluminium chloride.

1845 Wöhler establishes the specific gravity (density) of aluminium, and one of its unique properties - lightness.

1854 Henri Sainte-Claire Deville (France) improves Wöhler's method to create the first commercial process. The metal's price, initially higher than that of gold and platinum, drops by 90% over the following 10 years. The price is still high enough to inhibit its widespread adoption by industry.

1855 A bar of aluminium, the new precious metal, is exhibited at the Paris Exhibition.

1885 Hamilton Y. Cassner (USA) improves on Deville's process. Annual output 15 tonnes!

1886 Two unknown young scientists, Paul Louis Toussaint Héroult (France) and Charles Martin Hall (USA), working separately and unaware of each other's work, simultaneously invent a new electrolytic process, the Hall-Héroult process, which is the basis for all aluminium production today. They discovered that if they dissolved aluminium oxide (alumina) in a bath of molten cryolite and passed a powerful electric current through it, then molten aluminium would be deposited at the bottom of the bath.

Smelting Technology

1888 The first aluminium companies founded in France, Switzerland and the USA

1889 Karl Josef Bayer (Austria), son of the founder of the Bayer chemical company, invented the Bayer Process for the large scale production of alumina from bauxite.

1900 Annual output 8 thousand tonnes.

1913 Annual output 65 thousand tonnes.

1920 Annual output 128 thousand tonnes.

1938 Annual output 537 thousand tonnes.

1946 Annual output 681 thousand tonnes.

1999 Annual output 24 million tonnes.

The Statue of Eros in London's Piccadilly Circus, cast from aluminium in 1893.

Aluminium has only been produced commercially for 146 years and is still a very young metal. Mankind has been using copper, lead and tin for thousands of years and yet today more aluminium is produced than all other non-ferrous metals combined. Annual primary production in 1999 was about 24 million tonnes and secondary - recycled - production to some 7 million tonnes. The total of some 31 million tonnes compares with 14.1 million tonnes of copper , 6.0 million tonnes of lead and 0.2 million tonnes of tin .

So now you know...... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
--------------------

Support your local Bargains Galore from leading suppliers.

 

[macd]

You are correct: aluminum was the name given to the metal by Sir Humphrey Davy (see Cliff's post below). The metal wasn't isolated until the 19th Century, but in 1782 the great French chemist, Lavoisier, postulated that a clay-like substance was the oxide of an unknown metal and gave it a name meaning metal of clay. In 1808 Davy gave it the name "aluminum" which he felt sounded more scientific. His spelling is still used in North America but elsewhere in the world the spelling "Aluminium" is preferred, following the suggestion of Henri Sainte-Clair Deville that the '-ium' ending was more in keeping with the names of other elements.

 

[VicS]

[ QUOTE ]
aluminum was the name given to the metal by Sir Humphrey Davy

[/ QUOTE ] But actually at first he named it alumium, later changing it to aluminum. He also spelt his name Humphry.

 

[macd]

Posters were inquiring about two current usages, aluminium v aluminum, so that's what I addressed. As you write, earlier coinage is alumium.
Apologies to Davy, although I doubt he's taken offence. Why would he when he'd also suffered a change of name?

 

[richardandtracy]

Epoxy glues it well. Or P38 car body filler.

Failing that, take a look at a couple of casting's I've done in the last three weeks & re-cast it yourself with your own setup. See http://www.geocities.com/richardandtracy/articles/foundry.htm#done for how I did it.

Regards

Richard.