From aluminium profiles to solutions

Profiles that perform

All you want to do with a profile. And more.

Many people associate aluminium profiles with bars, rods and tubes. But did you know that we also manufacture customized profiles for trains, wind turbine nacelles and automotive components? Aluminium is suitable for many industrial applications. It is light, strong, durable, corrosion resistant, 100% recyclable and highly ductile allowing profiles to be formed into practically any shape. Remarkable 3D structures can be made out of a single profile, for example car roof rails. We can extrude complex hollow profiles, traditionally only obtainable using more expensive casting processes. Customers can eliminate production steps by changing to aluminium profiles as their preferred construction material. A steel structure requiring the assembly of 510 individual parts can be replaced by a single aluminium profile. Complex designs that integrate several design features can be made more easily, yet with comparable performance. We live with aluminium every day and know its capabilities. We would like to share our experiences with you. Our application engineers work exclusively on guiding customers to design shortcuts that can lower their material, design and manufacturing costs.

What is full service? Its up to you.

To some, full service is being able to order customized heat sinks, profiles for solar mounting systems or ship deck panels. To others, its relying on secure, regular just-in-time shipments of large quantities of standard profiles delivered straight into their warehouses. Some wish to manage orders to Sapa production plants on three continents via a single point of contact with us at Sapa. Others depend on our local support and ability to adapt swiftly to their changing business conditions. And there are those that co-operate with us throughout the life cycle of their products. From initial design concept to recycling of the aluminium scrap after the products end of life thus fully exploiting the economical and ecological advantage of 100 percent recyclable aluminium. What is full service to you?

What can we do for you?

The scope of use of aluminium profiles is limited only by the imagination. Perhaps its no surprise then that more and more architects, engineers and industrial designers are now turning their attention to aluminium. No matter what you wish to manufacture, there is every reason to take a closer look at aluminium. The versatility of aluminium as a material, and of profiles as design elements, allows for ingenious designs and significant cost savings. In many cases, the payback time of switching to aluminium is short due to its many productionrelated benefits. In the next few pages, you will find examples of customer cases where we contributed with profiles, application insights and design support and a variety of value-added services. We hope these stories can inspire new ideas. We at Sapa will help you to realize them.

Application and design support We guide you to the smartest designs for new or existing products based on best practice and the properties of aluminium.

Extrusion Pressing a heated billet through a die with great force offers endless design possibilities.

Punching The fastest and most economical method for hole cutting, cutting out blanks and cutting off lengths.

Cutting Our cross-cutting saws make cutting so burr-free it meets most requirements without further processing of the cut.

Bending Our bending methods including stretch bending, roller bending and press bending offer high shaping accuracy.

CNC processing With several CNCcontrolled multi-task machines, Sapa is well equipped in the area of high-speed machining.

Friction stir welding (FSW) FSW provides a new, homogeneous structure with greater strength and less heat deformation than conventional welding.

WELDING Most aluminium profile alloys are suitable for welding, using mainly MIG and TIG technology.

Surface treatment Anodising and powder coating are common methods for changing the properties or appearance of aluminium surfaces.

Assembly We can take care of assembly processes, where the profiles are part of a larger entity.

Print/laser engraving These are techniques offered by Sapa to make customer-specific inscriptions on aluminium details.

Logistics We are perfectly capable of co-ordinating the whole logistics chain to guarantee superb delivery precision.

What we did for Volvo

APPLICATION AND DESIGN SUPPORT

EXTRUSION

BENDING

WELDING

Punching

ASSEMBLY

Sealed with a ring

Sapa supplies fan rings made of aluminium profiles for truck engines. The fan rings channel and optimize the airflow from the fan to the radiator unit. Volvo needed to upgrade the quality of its fan rings. Improved stiffness, joining and shape regularity were required in order to reduce movement and swinging. Sapa invested in a new production line including a press for punching to create more reliable shapes, while robot welding en sures uniform thickness of the welded zone. This resulted in reduced weight, increased stability and improved tolerances. The Volvo fan rings are a perfect example of how we can help improve, develop and produce new products in co-operation with our customers.

Aluminium eco-bike
As a concept of the future, Brammo Enertia captures the essence of aluminium. A fully electric powercycle, it reduces emissions and, made mostly of 100 percent recyclable aluminium, it also reduces the extraction of raw materials. Sapa has been supplying the frame assemblies for the eco-bikes since 2009. After trying out early carbon fibre prototypes, Brammo turned to aluminium and Sapa for their one-of-a-kind bikes. They realized that aluminium is strong, attractive, lightweight, formable, and with its green properties, the metal of choice. Brammo chose Sapa for its full-service capabilities and local U.S. presence. The Sapa team then worked closely with the Brammo team as they designed the frame. A number of Sapas capabilities went into building the frame, including machining processes, bending and welding. After welding, a final heat treatment and artificial ageing process then restored the finished assembly to full T6 properties, after which it was anodised.

What we did for Brammo

APPLICATION AND DESIGN SUPPORT

EXTRUSION

Cutting

BENDING

CNC processing

WELDING

Surface treatment

LASER ENGRAVING

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What we did for Walther

APPLICATION AND DESIGN SUPPORT

EXTRUSION

Cutting

CNC processing

Surface treatment

PRINT

Aiming for accuracy

Sapa helped German rifle manufacturer Walther develop aluminium parts for its new Olympic-quality air rifle, LG400. Using extruded aluminium for the stock offers desirable weight benefits. And unlike synthetic stocks, aluminium provides the stiffness necessary for maximum shooting accuracy. An aesthetically pleasing brushed aluminium surface also contributes to the excellent design. The project required all of Sapas expertise. Tooling and milling were challenging as rifle components involve a lot of detail and must fit together perfectly. Sapas journey began at the metallurgy stage seeking the right alloy composition followed by design, profiling, CNC machining, anodising and printing. For some shooters, the journey may well end up on the Olympic podium.

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An elevated position
A good referee is invisible. At least according to certain sports fans and commentators. Whatever the case may be, referees do need a clear view to do a good job. In beach volleyball, referees are offered an excellent view thanks to aluminium referee stands, designed and manufactured by Sapa in Poland on behalf of Sport-Transfer a leading Polish sports equipment provider. Sapa came up with a versatile concept with special features. The referee stand is foldable to allow easy assembly without tools and it has an adjustable platform with three fixed height levels. Standard profiles eliminated the need for investing in new dies. Since the stand is almost always covered by banner ads, surface quality was not a major issue so a 15-micron of anodising layer was sufficient surface treatment. The referee stand remains a standard product in Sport-Transfers annual product catalogue to this day.

What we did for Sport-Transfer

APPLICATION AND DESIGN SUPPORT

EXTRUSION

Cutting

CNC processing

WELDING

Surface treatment

ASSEMBLY

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A sunshine story
Solar energy panels depend on inverters to convert DC to AC for commercial use. Italy-based Power-One is a world-leading provider of solar inverters and Sapa provides the heat sinks necessary for their cooling. Excellent heat dissipation makes aluminium ideal for use in heat sinks. Moreover, extruded aluminium outperforms cast aluminium due to its higher thermal conductivity, and copper due to its lower weight. Heat sinks are optimized for maximum thermal performance, and all the machinery used is customized for Power-One. Sapa is a total solution supplier, from extrusion to delivery directly into Power-Ones production line, including gasketing of the heat sinks. Power-One awarded Sapa the task of supplying the heat sinks to their 30 kW three-phase model Aurora Trio confirming Sapas position as their number-one provider.

What we did for Power-One

APPLICATION AND DESIGN SUPPORT

extrusion

Cutting

CNC processing

WELDING

SURFACE TREATMENT

ASSEMBLY

LOGISTICS

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What we did for Lite Industries

APPLICATION AND DESIGN SUPPORT

Cutting

FSW

CNC

FSW
BOCKNING extrusion SURFACE TREATMENT FRICTION STIR WELDING

In the trenches
Imagine kneeling in a trench to do maintenance work. Its the claustrophobic reality for many ground workers today. Trench shields from Australian Lite Industries make life easier for these exposed workers. Mini excavators are mainly used in deep excavation work. Although versatile and easy to manoeuvre, they have limited lifting capabilities. Trenches are therefore being made narrow, which puts ground workers at risk. Lite Industries trench shields reduce the risk of collapsing trench walls or falling objects by reinforcing the walls. Sapas structural grade aluminium solution offers several benefits. They are as strong as steel but one-third the weight, thus simplifying transport and assembly. They are corrosion-free, unaffected by contaminated soils and less maintenance-intensive than steel or timber systems. Besides the product itself, Sapa provided the technical support necessary to fine-tune the product.

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Mind blowing giant

With a rotor diameter of 120 metres, WinWinD 3 ranks among the giants in megawatt wind turbines. The impressive rotors make the turbine productive even at low speeds. WinWinD 3 is the latest addition of wind turbine generators from Finnish WinWinD. Sapa delivers the lightweight, aluminiumbased nacelle cover, which makes installation easier and more cost efficient. The self-supporting nacelle cover replaces conventional parts of a GRP nacelle cover and the steel support frame (I-beams). It is a stiff structure in terms of bending and torsion, which also offers natural surface protection without painting. The nacelle cover is made of extruded panels joined together by Friction Stir Welding (FSW). Sapa performed static and dynamic finite element analysis (FEA) to optimize the design of the aluminium extrusions.

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What we did for WinWinD 3

APPLICATION AND DESIGN SUPPORT

extrusion

Nacelle cover for WinWinD 3

Cutting CNC processing

Friction stir welding (FSW)

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Shaping the world since 1963

In 50 years, Sapa has grown to become the worlds leading provider of aluminium profiles, with production in more than 30 countries on three continents. So no matter where your profiles are produced, we are able to provide full local support. We focus entirely on the design and manufacturing of profiles and their applications and on providing first class service to our customers. As profile specialists, we are able to create solutions that add significant value to our customers. We call it profiles that perform.

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 Copyright Sapa Group 2012

About Sapa Profiles

Sapa is the worlds leading producer of extruded aluminium profiles. We help customers exploit the full benefit of aluminium profiles. Aluminium weighs only one third of steel. It is easy to shape into advanced designs, it has a smooth surface finish and it is 100 percent recyclable. As experts on the material, we are able to provide professional technology and engineering support, allowing customers to optimize their designs based on the properties of aluminium. Strongly focused on sustainability management, we strive to continuously improve our economic, environmental and social performance.

www.sapagroup.com