What Are Aluminum Cut Squareness Standards?

Standards Organization

• Aluminum industry standards are a set of voluntary manufacturing requirements developed through the auspices of the American National Standards Institute and its Aluminum and Aluminum Alloys Committee, a subcommittee of the Accredited Standards Committee H35. The aluminum standards provide an agreed upon limit of accuracy for aluminum manufacturing processes -- no manufacturing process is 100 percent accurate. The squareness standard provides a level of reliability in both horizontal and vertical planes.

Aluminum Cut Squareness

• Cut squareness is a reference to the fabrication of aluminum, which can be fabricated through extrusion, drawing and rolling processes. The cut end of an aluminum product is the exposed end of the product shape and the cut end must meet a certain squareness standard before being released to a customer. Standards for aluminum cut squareness define allowable deviations to cut ends in every type of aluminum fabrication process. Deviations are the allowable difference between the actual end product and a square. In other words, the standard addresses how much the profile at the cut end of the aluminum can deviate from the standard square of 90 degrees. A deviation is also referred to as an allowable “tolerance."

Extrusions and Drawing

• Aluminum extrusions and drawn aluminum products are created using two different manufacturing processes. Aluminum extrusions are created by pushing the metal alloy through a die or mold to create an object with a particular shape and details, such as a metal window frame. Drawing aluminum involves pulling or stretching the metal alloy into the desired shape using a die. Drawn aluminum products include sheet metal, wire, bars and tubes. Aluminum cut squareness standards for extruded and drawn aluminum are one degree. This means the squareness of the cut end cannot deviate more than one degree from a square falling somewhere between 89 to 91 degrees in both its horizontal and vertical planes.

Rolled Aluminum

• Rolled aluminum passes through a pair of rollers to form the aluminum. Rolling is further defined by the amount of temperature accessed during the process; the cold rolled process typically uses room temperature and the hot rolled process uses temperatures higher than room temperature. Aluminum cut squareness standards are one degree for rolled aluminum products.