How to make foil?

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How to make foil?

Foil is a very thin sheet made ofany metal or metal alloy. The thickness of the foil, as a rule, does not exceed 0.2 cm, so it is comparable to the thickness of a paper sheet. Often foil is made from tin and its alloys (such a foil is called "staniol"), iron (the second name for thick iron foil is "tin") and gold (thinly rolled gold is called "sousal"). The most common material used for the production of foil is aluminum. It is thin aluminum sheets in everyday life and it is customary to call simply foil. On how aluminum foil is made, read in this article.

Technology of aluminum foil production

Aluminum is smelted from aluminum ore (bauxite or alunite) at the smelter.
Finished aluminum is poured into special molds and immersed in water for rapid cooling.
Received large ingots of aluminum (the length of the discs is more than 4 meters, and they weigh more than seven tons) are extracted from the molds and transferred to a rolling mill by a crane.
The ingot of aluminum is first prepared for rolling. To do this, the disc is placed on a special pad and the computer is cut off from all sides under the control of the computer. From each side of the ingot, a three-millimeter top layer is cut with special equipment. As a result of this operation, all irregularities and impurities are removed from the blank and it takes the form of a regular parallelepiped with mirror smooth sides.
Next, the workpiece is heated to a temperature of 550 ° C and begins to roll it between the rollers. In order that aluminum does not adhere to the rolls, their surface is constantly wetted with a water-oil emulsion.
The workpiece is passed through the rolls repeatedly, withEach thickness of the workpiece decreases. When it reaches a thickness of one centimeter, and this happens, as a rule, after sixteen-fold hire, the future foil is cooled and rolled into a large roll.
Then this roll is moved to the cold shoprolling, where the method of cold crimping is adjusted to a thickness of the workpiece to 200 microns. If it is desired to produce a thick aluminum foil, the workpiece is passed through the rolls a number of times and the cold rolled process is then stopped.
If you need a thinner foil (such asusually we use for household purposes), the foil is passed through the rolls at least four more times. And the last time the foil becomes already thin enough, so that it does not break when passing through the rolls, two foil strips are folded and passed through the rolls simultaneously. It is because of this that the kitchen foil has two different sides - matte and glossy. The matte side is the side of the tape that was inside the workpiece, and the glossy side was on the outside, it touched the surface of the shaft and was polished about it to a mirror finish.
At the end of production, sheets of foil are cut offuneven edges, cut the foil into strips of the desired width, cut the pieces of the required length from the strips, wrap them on cardboard tubes and pack the finished rolls of foil into a film or cardboard boxes.

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