A short history of aluminium castings

Today, it's easy to take for granted the integral role that aluminium castings have played in creating the world in which we now live. It is thanks to aluminium castings that such fields as transportation, packaging and construction are quite as advanced as they are, and indeed, there is no more commonly used non-ferrous metal. Tens of millions of tonnes of aluminium are produced worldwide each year, and it is routinely alloyed to increase its mechanical properties and versatility. But what is the wider history of this silvery, soft, ductile metal?

Aluminium salts were popular as dyeing mordants among ancient Greeks and Romans, who also used them as astringents for the dressing of wounds - indeed, alum continues in use as a styptic today. By 1808, the existence of a metal base of alum had been identified by Humphry Davy, but it took until 1825 for the metal to finally be produced in an impure form, by Hans Christian Ørsted, the Danish physicist and chemist. Fast-forward to the later 19th century, and the widespread manufacture of aluminium castings still looked a long way off, due to the considerable difficulty of extracting the metal from its various ores.

The 1880s did change matters, however, with the emergence of commercial electrical generation and the Hall–Héroult process for smelting aluminium. There are reports of aluminium finally being used as a building material before the century was out, as its price gradually came down. Then came World War I, and the attendant rapid expansion of the airplane industry that led major governments to request significant quantities of aluminium for light, strong airframes, the factories and requisite electrical supply systems also often subsidised at this time. As the decades since then have passed, so the applications of aluminium castings become increasingly bewildering in range, encompassing even the apparently unlikeliest of fields.

The seemingly endless range of transportation methods that have benefitted from aluminium castings, for example, include aircraft, automobiles, trucks, bicycles, railway cars and marine vessels. The metal has also found use in packaging such as cans and foil, as well as in construction for doors and windows. Street lighting poles and sailing ship masts are other items to have been made from aluminium, which has also been applied to such common household items as watches, baseball bats and cooking utensils. Even the casing of the MacBook Pro is made out of aluminium.

The list goes on, through the likes of MKM steel and Alnico magnets, electrical transmission lines for power distribution and heat sinks for such electronic appliances as CPUs and transistors. What is clear in an overview of all of these applications is that aluminium castings have been instrumental in realising today's modern world, and are certainly unlikely to decline in importance any time soon. By contacting a renowned metal fabrication specialist like K&S Metals, those in need of expertly-engineered aluminium castings can continue to put the metal to all manner of innovative and effective uses.

Editor’s Note: K&S Metals (http://www.ksmetals.net) are represented by the search engine advertising and digital marketing specialists Jumping Spider Media. Email: info@jumpingspidermedia.co.uk or call: +44 (0)20 3070 1959 / +34 952 783 637.