Process for producing thick sheet from direct chill cast cold rolled aluminum alloy

Abstract

A process for producing thick aluminum/aluminum alloy sheet useful for truck parts and the like includes the steps of feeding molten aluminum/aluminum alloy (10) into a direct casting apparatus (12) to provide an ingot that is subjected to a cooling (15) and optional scalping step (14), followed by hot rolling (18) to provide a sheet having a thickness for from about 3.2 mm to 5.8 mm and is suitable to coil in step (20), and where the sheet is cooled (21) to less than to 60° C. and cold rolled (22, 24) at from about 120° C. to 160° C. to reduce the sheet to about 0.9 mm to 1.5 mm to 160° C., where heat generated during the cold rolling (22, 24) stabilizes the sheet without additional energy intensive oven furnace annealing. The reduced sheet can then be trimmed (28) and coated (30) as with paint or the like.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.