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AL-LEAN™ is a modified 6060 extrusion alloy designed to extrude at higher speeds and more efficiently to enable weight reduction, enhanced design complexity, cost savings and decarbonization.
Manufacturers are being challenged to deliver lighter, more sustainable and more cost-efficient products without compromising performance. Meeting these demands requires a new approach to aluminium extrusion. Developed to consider what the application requires rather than what the alloy allows, AL-LEAN™ enables greater design freedom, greater extrusion efficiency and higher potential weight savings.
Developed for productivity and performance
The idea behind AL-LEAN™ began with a customer challenge: how can we reduce the carbon footprint of our aluminium component? Rather than focusing on reducing the carbon footprint of the billet or using more recycled content, our team took a different approach. What if we simply used less aluminium?
Reducing the amount of material used in a profile and component can deliver an immediate impact lower weight and a lower carbon footprint. However, achieving this material reduction without compromising the performance of the final product required a fundamentally different approach to alloy development.
This challenge led us to take a component-level approach to extrusion alloy design. The project was to develop an extrusion alloy that could enable greater design freedom, maintain the performance required by the application, and improve extrusion efficiency, while using less material.
Alloy composition
AL-LEAN™ is a modified 6060 alloy solution with lower levels of magnesium and silicon. These changes influence the alloy's extrusion characteristics, reducing the pressure required during extrusion and enabling opportunities for thinner walls, lower component weight and significantly higher extrusion speeds.
The alloy also contains slightly lower levels of iron, copper, manganese, zinc and titanium, resulting in a softer material compared with traditional 6060 alloys. Consequently, AL-LEAN™ has lower tensile and yield strength than traditional 6060 solutions.
While hardness might be reduced, the alloy composition has demonstrated improvements in other beyond design aspects such as increased die life, increased thermal conductivity and increased laser weldability.
The properties of AL-LEAN™ make it particularly suited to applications where lower mechanical strength is compatible with the performance requirements of the final component. In these applications, the alloy can enable designers to optimize material use while improving extrusion efficiency and design freedom.
Understanding the alloy
Traditional 6060
AL-LEAN™
Silicon
Higher
Lower
Magnesium
Higher
Lower
Other alloying elements
Slightly higher
Slightly lower
Alloy hardness
Harder
Softer
Extrusion pressure
Higher
Lower
Extrusion speed
Slower
Faster
Tensile strength
Higher
Lower
Yield strength
Higher
Lower
Make more, with less
By re-designing the alloy around the requirements of the application, AL-LEAN™ creates opportunities to improve production efficiency, reduce material consumption and unlock new design possibilities across the manufacturing process.
Lower extrusion pressure can enable more complex shapes and optimized profile designs, creating opportunities to reduce component weight and material consumption.
AL-LEAN™ can be extruded at significantly higher speeds, creating opportunities to increase productivity and improve process efficiency. Combined with reduced material consumption, this can contribute to lower manufacturing costs.
Greater design freedom can enable more functional profile designs, potentially increasing component performance while reducing the need for additional manufacturing steps. In suitable applications, thinner walls can further reduce material use and component weight.
Using less aluminium in total can lead to reduced material costs and the associated product carbon footprint, while improving overall value of the final product.
Suitable applications
Thermal Management
AL-LEAN™ is extremely suitable to applications like heat sinks due to the enhanced design capabilities and reduced wall thickness. This combination is evident in extrusion tests achieving fin ratio of up to 1:20. The alloy has also demonstrated increase thermal conductivity of up to 7% compared to standard 6060 alloys.
Building & Construction
Window systems, doors and partition wall systems can all benefit from reduced material consumption and increased productivity resulting in lower carbon footprints and potentially reduced material costs.
Electrical & Electronics
While electrical conductivity in AL-LEAN™ is generally lower than Hydro’s conductive portfolio, greater design flexibility can enable complex, lightweight profiles while supporting the functional requirements of electrical and electronic components.
General Engineering & Standard Profiles
Opportunities to improve extrusion efficiency, reduce material consumption and reduce weight can provide a more cost-effective solution for standard profiles being subject to further manufacturing processes.
