Skip to main content

Vedanta’s import substitute billets give a fillip to Make In India


Vedanta is a major producer of high grade aluminium and various other products such as billets and ingots, which are supplied to secondary fabrication units. Although Vedanta has been a significant billet manufacturer for a long time, the requirement spelt out by a new customer - Vikas Altech was a huge challenge.

Even today, the micro tubes in automotive radiators are manufactured from copper. Due to ever changing needs of the customer segments, these tubes are now required to be made from special alloys in which aluminium is the base metal. The application called for a special alloy and that too with a specific post treatment process (homozanization cycle). It also called for specific changes in the casting process like the filtration mechanism, changing the filters from 40ppi to 50ppi, additional degassing process etc. All these actions were important since the end-product to be extruded was of a very thin and hollow profile used in automotive air conditioning heat exchangers and had to be leak-proof.  Moreover the alloy (3102M) was not a standard alloy for Vedanta. For this new alloy to be made, most of the intrinsic elements had to be tweaked to suit the requirement. In total, three different alloys have been developed, the other two being AA1050 & AA1100 alloys.

www.vikasaltech.com
Vikas Altech's Micro Tube application in Heat Exchangers
Courtesy: www.vikasaltech.com

The challenge of casting these specific alloys was taken up and after a development cycle of over a year, it became a reality. In the long term, Vedanta plans to conduct R&D in the heat exchanger market to produce new alloys that will improve the performance of the end products. Now, Vikas Altech has stopped importing billets from overseas suppliers and is procuring the same for multi-port tube applications from Vedanta Aluminium Limited. 

According to Harsha Shetty, Vedanta Aluminium's Head Marketing, "Our innovation has not only substituted Copper with Aluminium but has also given the domestic downstream industry an opportunity to Make in India at substantially lower costs while providing better quality to end users." This was the first time that such downstream extrusions started being manufactured in India and specifically, the first time that such kind of billets have been developed in the country. This niche segment right now is worth Rs.250 crores and Vedanta hopes to supply 6% of this demand this fiscal. Gradually this breakthrough product is expected to completely stop India's dependence on imports.

Comments

Most read articles

Aluminium in guitars – It's all music to our ears

Think of a guitar and the classic wooden version comes to mind. There are hundreds of types and they come in all shapes and sizes. Some passionate players even go for custom made guitars just to suit their movements and taste. The simple guitar is still evolving with newer uses of the instruments in concerts and other forms of music. The use of wood in the body and the neck of a guitar is not going to cease in a long time. However, the use of other selected materials by modern guitar manufacturers has significantly improved the sound quality and handling of the guitars. “Manufacturers were making custom guitars from solid billeted aluminum. I was still in graduate school and couldn’t afford such instruments. So I decided to make a competitively priced guitar. Instead of wood or plastic, I opted to use 0.080-in. aircraft-grade aluminum sheet metal because of its quality and durability,” says the then-future CEO of Normandy Guitars. Aluminium Guitar The use of Alumin

Aluminium extrusions - The ultimate value addition of Aluminium downstream

From simple paper clips to complex pieces used in advanced technology, aluminium extrusions are created in various shapes and sizes for value added end use utilizations. The computer you are using right now contains at least one aluminium profile in the form of a heat sink. This takes advantage of aluminium’s excellent thermal conductivity, unique anodising capability and freedom of design to keep your computer’s processor cool. Different cross sections of extrusions Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile. A special tool called a ‘die’ is used to create these extrusions by cutting or shaping the material with the help of a press. These dies are customized to create the wanted design. The process involves the pressing of a pre-heated solid cylinder of aluminium (billet) which is forced through the die opening. The billets are heated to a temperature range of 350 – 500 degrees Celsius. Aluminium does not glow when heated ye

The choice is clear - Aluminium body for high end smartphones

A lot of phone companies are trying to build slim and sturdy phones for the ever growing market of steroid enhanced hardware capabilities. With phone manufacturers stuffing more RAM and precision cameras in the modern phones, the weight and robustness of the frames becomes all the more important. Today, some manufactures prefer a fiber body to reduce the overall weight in comparison to metal bodies. However, there’s something which still draws a larger advocacy of using aluminium bodies instead of a plastic or fiber. In 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs penned an open letter highlighting changes to the company's environmental policy in hopes of achieving "a greener Apple." In the letter, Jobs specifically noted the Mac maker's adoption of aircraft-grade aluminum in order to improve recycling uptake. Apart from the cost reduction implications, Apple is strongly in favor of aluminium usage in all its products for improving its year on year recycling capabilities with

Aluminium vs. Steel - (1) The changing tides in the automotive sector

To Steel or not to Steel… That is the question. To Aluminium… This might be the answer. The automobile industry is the one constantly shifting tides in technology and design to achieve perfection and quality. Everything is done with precision to maximise the output from the machines with as few resources as possible. After all, this is necessary as natural resources are limited and so are the resources which people can spare for an economical, ergonomic and environment-friendly vehicle of personal transportation. Moreover, safety is an important issue that the engineers keep at priority as people’s lives are at stake. Aluminium body is the preferred material in sports cars With car manufacturers around the world trying to pack in more punch with their offerings, the fight for better fuel efficiency and safety of the automobiles has intensified. With cutting edge designing and engineering capabilities, car manufacturers have carefully selected the materials and technology to

Did we just chance upon a source for clean fuel powered by water & aluminium?

Source: Getty A team of researchers at the US Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground Maryland made a chance discovery when they poured water on a new aluminium alloy they were testing. It began to give off hydrogen immediately! Exciting enough? Well, let us rewind this recent ground-breaking discovery and allow it to sink in slowly as you read on. Hydrogen stands at number one on the periodic table; it is the most abundant element in the Universe. It is found in the sun and most of the stars and the planet Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen. On Earth, Hydrogen is prevalent in the form of plenteously available chemical compounds such as hydrocarbons and water. Some see hydrogen gas as the clean fuel of the future – generated from water and returning to water when it is oxidised . Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are increasingly being seen as ‘pollution-free’ sources of energy and are now being used in some buses and cars. Although clean and