Profiles made of steel or aluminum?

Each feedstock material has its strengths

The properties of roll formed profiles made of high-strength steel are a great advantage in many applications. They are also particularly economical from a delivery quantity of around 5,000 metres, as downstream processes can largely be integrated into a single roll forming process:

COMPARISON OF ALUMINUM AND STEEL

Specific material properties of steel
- Strength: Steel is stronger than aluminum: If the strength of your aluminum profile is no longer sufficient and you cannot increase the wall thickness, roll formed profiles made of steel or stainless steels with higher strengths are advantageous.
- Weight: Aluminum is lighter than steel. However, the higher strength of steel profiles means that it is possible to compensate for this disadvantage thanks to a more filigree design - i.e. reduced material thickness, load-optimized shaping (also known as strip thickness optimization) or eco-design.
- The coefficient of thermal expansion and modulus of elasticity of steel are particularly advantageous when used in combination with glass. Steel is also suitable for fire protection systems.
- Aluminum has a natural corrosion resistance that protects the material from environmental influences. Steel profiles are also corrosion-resistant thanks to alloys or coatings.
Steel offers a long service life at lower costs through appropriate selection of the feedstock material and surface finish (wide range of different alloys and coatings)
Steel has been an established material for centuries with extensive supply chains. Thanks to our production facilities in Austria, Germany and the USA, we are able to procure it locally.

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Where roll forming (steel) scores over extrusion (aluminum)

Roll forming enables production with very tight tolerances (cross-section, wall thickness, etc.) and has a very high repeatability accuracy.
The use of materials in roll forming is particularly resource-efficient.
The roll forming process enables the integration of additional downstream processing steps such as punching or embossing into one production run. The result is a low cost profile that is ready for immediate use.
We can even roll form high-strength steels with a tensile strength of up to 1700 N/mm2.
Steel can be coated, ground, brushed and otherwise refined. Steel strips with high-quality surfaces (e.g. ground or brushed) can also be processed without any loss of quality thanks to removable protective films.

We can also roll form aluminum, for example if particularly thin-walled profiles are required that cannot be extruded, or if features along the length of the profile make the secondary operations associated with extrusion too costly. These roll formed aluminum profiles also meet tight material thickness tolerances over the entire length of the bar.

What roll forming can also do...

Roll forming tools are more complex than the extrusion tools used for the production of aluminum profiles and therefore cost more. We have developed modular tool concepts - tailored to your requirements in terms of profile variety, product life cycle and profile complexity – this means we only ever pass on a proportion of the tool costs to you.
By integrating welding systems into the roll forming process, we produce closed profiles. Our technical equipment also enables the production of multi-chamber profiles.

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