Annealing aluminium

I'm new to this whole forum thing. I'm Doug from Sydney, Australia and I'm a build anything nut.

I own a Moto Guzzi 850 Le manns MkII. Its now a completely differant machine. If I don't like it, it gets replaced with something I do like & for the most part I'll make the it myself.

Now, I'm making an aluminium tank for it. How often do you anneal a 2mm sheet. It will be a two part design, the upper section carrying the whole shape, so its got a lot of crown in it, as you can imagine.

Probably taken on more than I can chew, but you never know till you have fun trying.

You guys seem to be of the same sort of thinking.

Hope you can help.
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Run your torch with a pure acetylene flame and put a layer of soot over the whole area that you want to aneal, then adjust the rig to neutral and "burn the soot off" and let it cool. Done.

 

You'll need to anneal when the aluminium gets stiff or quits moving, about the time it wants to crack (you don't have to wait that long)..

Just color it with a sharpie marker and 'burn' it off, it's roughly 750 degrees F. Works even better if you can cover it up fibergl*** insolation and let it cool real slow.

 

What need louvers? said. Done it a few times and it worked better than expected.

 

Limited experience useing both methods on 5052 and 3003, .050 on up to 1/8" The soot has worked better than the sharpie for me for some reason.

Ed

 

I just did this yesterday after reading your post made me remember that I had some aluminum that I started to make a motorcylce tank out of. I worked it on my tree stump, and it didn't take long for it to harden. I annealed it just like Need Louvers said, and it worked like a charm. Make sure you move the torch quickly when you burn the soot off. I moved it slowly at first and the aluminum started to sag like it was about to melt.

Shane

 

shoulda probably mentioned that part!!! Thought of it right after I hit "post"!

 

Shoulda probably mentioned that part!!! Thought of it right after I hit "post"!

 

You also might want to consider making it in 3 peices- left top, right top, weld them together. Metal finish the weld while you can reach both sides then do the bottom.
Just a thought.

 

Even when in the soft condition some alloys are hard to work. Be sure to use an alloy that is weldable. The easiest to work is 1100 series. That is essentially aluminum with no alloying elements. The down side to using 1100 is that it's easier to dent and not as strong.

 

3003 has alway been a favorite of mine. Welds real well too, even with gas.

 

Thank you guys. I'll go for more often then less.
Its getting there.