Aluminium scrap — profiles, sector and castings

Three different grades and three different rates. Sector is the cleanest, uniform and hard alloy with no admixtures — the highest-priced grade. Profile (e.g. PA38, 6060) is aluminium from window and structural joinery. A casting is a soft, silicon-bearing alloy from housings and cylinder heads. Odylion classifies each of these grades separately, so a load sorted at source is not settled as a blended “aluminium mix”.

Yes — these are two separate grades. An uncoated profile goes into a higher-priced grade than a coated one, which is why Odylion splits them on intake instead of settling both at a single rate. The grade is also affected by admixtures of other metals and by contamination left in the material — steel, plastics and rubber. The base grade is profile cut to 1 m; longer profiles are accepted as well, but they need cutting.

No, you don’t. Odylion classifies profiles with a polyamide (PA) thermal break separately and accounts for the break in the price, so you don’t have to remove it before delivery.

By cleanliness and moisture. Turnings from turning and milling are settled with contamination and emulsion taken into account — dry, uniform turnings are a higher grade than heavily oiled turnings or turnings mixed with another metal.

Yes. Alloy wheels are accepted without tyres only — Odylion does not buy the tyres themselves, as they are a separate waste stream. Settlement follows once the wheel is cleared of steel parts, bushings and lead balance weights, so you get paid for the aluminium alone; a wheel delivered with weights and steel parts still on goes into the contaminated grade.

It is worth doing, because this is one of the largest grade differences in the whole aluminium group. Clean offset sheet from a print shop is a uniform, highly valued material, whereas offset with a paper layer left on is classified by Odylion separately and distinctly lower. Separating the paper at source genuinely raises the value of a print-shop delivery.

Yes. Aluminium-magnesium alloy sheet forms its own family and is classified by thickness and fraction size — thin sheet below 5 mm, thick sheet above 5 mm and a fine fraction are all settled differently. Foil-backed sheet is graded separately again.

The first digit of the four-digit EN AW designation names the main alloying element: 1xxx is commercially pure aluminium, 2xxx is alloyed with copper, 3xxx with manganese, 4xxx with silicon, 5xxx with magnesium, 6xxx with magnesium and silicon, 7xxx with zinc, and 8xxx with other elements. In scrap buying we most often meet the 6xxx series (profile, EN AW-6060 or PA38) and the 5xxx series (AlMg sheet, 5754 and 5083). Castings carry their own EN AC designations and markedly more silicon, which is why Odylion grades them separately from profile.

Because they bring in zinc and copper, which cannot be removed from liquid aluminium — the concentration of those elements only comes down through dilution with primary metal. Profile alloy 6060 permits at most 0.15% zinc while dural 7075 carries over 5%, so even a small admixture of aerospace parts or sports equipment pushes a batch out of spec. That is why Odylion grades such alloys separately, and why the turnings grade excludes 7xxx-series material and free-machining alloys containing bismuth.

A photo is enough — the branch staff assess the grade. Unusual or hard-to-identify material Odylion checks on the spot with a handheld spectrometer, so the classification rests on the real elemental composition rather than a judgement by eye.

Yes. A single casting is accepted up to 50 kg and up to 50 × 50 × 120 cm, because larger pieces do not fit the melting process at the buyer’s end. Whatever the size, a casting must not contain sealed tanks or pressure vessels, airbag gas generators, material of military origin or radioactive parts — such items risk an explosion or a fire during melting and are excluded from delivery.