From Chris Tindall
I read with interest Hal Hodson’s article on the use of aluminium as a steel replacement (28 February, p 22). I have been producing control software for metal finishing production lines for over 20 years, and foresee a bottleneck that will hamper the increased use of aluminium.
Steel parts are commonly electropainted to increase corrosion resistance and to provide a key for further finishing. Aluminium parts are anodised for the same purpose. The problem comes in the time difference between the processes. Electropainting takes 2 to 4 minutes, while anodising takes 20 to 40 minutes. To get the same throughput in parts processed, production lines will have to be much bigger, and that will require major investment.
Southampton, UK
