What is the Difference between Rolled Aluminum and Cast Tool & Jig Plates?

What is the difference between Rolled Aluminum & Cast Tool & Jig Plates? These two types of aluminum plate are produced differently to achieve specific characteristics. In this article, we explain how they’re made as well as their real life applications.

Rolled aluminum plate

Rolled aluminum plate is one of the most common forms of industrial aluminum used today.

How is it made?

There are several steps to creating rolled aluminum plate.

First, you heat a cast aluminum slab to over 500 degrees Celsius. Then you take that material and pass it through a series of hot rollers to achieve a desired thickness.

Further cold rolling reduces the final thickness by 0.008 inches or lower for specialty applications.

Use cases

Rolled aluminum plate is a highly versatile product. Construction, manufacturing, packaging and food industries widely make use of this metal because of its increased ductility and workability.

This form of aluminum is also often used in strength-applications such as engineering.

Cast tool & jig plate

On the other hand, cast tool & jig plate is an aluminum product that’s processed for increased stability and machined flat to a high degree of accuracy.

It’s also important to note that cast tool & jig plates are the aluminum plate products with the tightest tolerances. What does this mean? Workers must follow extremely strict design parameters during the manufacturing process, without deviation.

How is it made?

To produce cast tool & jig plate, a continuous cast plate is machined on both sides.

After that, the machined plate is thermally relieved to reduce internal stresses and ensure that it remains within the tight specifications.

Use cases

Due to its high precision, cast tool & jig plates are commonly used in precision manufacturing applications such as jigs and fixtures, templates, tooling, and even specialist equipment (i.e., medical instrumentation and electronic components).

This type of plate is only typically used in non-strength applications.