“Ali-Clad” Steel and Aluminium Composite Tube

Aluminium tube is reduced tightly onto a steel tube core, ensuring a precise fit with excellent cutting and bending properties.

Some heavier duty applications demand the strength of steel but without the accompanying dirty finish and tendency towards corrosion. While powder coating or plating afford some protection, over time the protective layer may become scratched or chipped reducing its corrosion resistant properties potentially resulting in unsightly bubbles and blemishes. A more durable option that combines steel’s strength with the shiny finish and low corrosion afforded by aluminium is “Ali-clad” tube.

Ali-clad tube is a composite tube made up of a steel tube core and an aluminium tube shell. This method provides a much thicker and more durable protective layer for the steel than any coating or plating, while still providing an attractive metallic finish.

We have designed our production technique to ensure a finished tube with reliable mechanical properties. This is essential to our customers to avoid poorly or loosely fitting outer tubes that can result in the aluminium shell snapping, splitting, slipping or rippling during fabrication operations. These risks are eliminated with our method of Ali-clad production.

Using our Ali-clad production technique we achieve a precise fit between the aluminium tube and the steel tube core ensuring the tubes act as one in subsequent fabrication processes, including cutting and bending. We achieve this precise fit between layers by inserting the steel core into the aluminium tube and passing them through a reducing mill, which changes the diameter of the outer aluminium tube until it fits tightly around the steel core along the full length of the tube, so you can be confident of a correctly performing finished composite tube every time.

To find out more about Ali-clad composite tube please call us on 02476 326 585 or email sales@jdrproductsltd.com.

Aluminium tube is reduced tightly onto a steel tube core, ensuring a precise fit with excellent cutting and bending properties.