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Not sure what metals may be useful for your business? Here is a list of the five most common metals that businesses need for their operations, and which metals are best for custom metal fabrications.

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If you’re looking to run a successful business, it helps to know the ins and outs of what’s useful to you, and with that comes knowing about materials and their usage. If you want to run a construction business, a manufacturing business, or anything else, it would be wise to know what materials are best for what occasion. You might be able to use this information to help you make a big investment in some new equipment or to help you choose a different type of material for your project.

You can’t open a machine shop without knowing what’s what, and it would be wasteful to make inefficient usage of what you’re buying. Here are the top five metals you can use for your business:

Iron

Everyone knows about the many uses that iron has in order to make things that are strong and durable. It’s known for its sturdiness and easy availability, but it’s not applied everywhere – why is that? It’s very hard to work with iron, just as there are some limitations to some of the heavier metals. Due to its high melting point, you’ll often see it used for furnaces, cooking instruments, machinery, and more. Because iron is extremely hard, it won’t bend if it heats up terribly – unless it gets amazingly hot. It’s very heavy and rough, so it’s not ideal for fine metalwork.

Steel

Steel really is a very common metal that you’d see a lot of every day. Unlike iron, steel can be much finer and lighter – making it perfect for everyday products that you would see around the house. For example, scissors, food utensils, and more. With that said, it’s still a very tough material and is used in a lot of construction projects. It’s very durable and corrosion resistant, which is why steel is such a useful and reliable material to use in construction projects.

Aluminum

Aluminum, a wonderful metal, has a lot of applications. It can be seen in many lightweight metal constructions. It’s not as strong as steel, but it’s still lightweight and incredibly strong. Aluminum is great for making custom metal parts and it can also be easily machined into intricate shapes and designs. It’s great for custom metal fabrication and perfect for machining. You can make complicated aluminum things from aluminum, like signs, car parts, computer components, and cans. It’s fairly simple to work with, and it’s easily recyclable. Creating aluminum products is fairly easy and cheap. Just as easily rusty as steel, aluminum is very resistant to corrosion.

Copper alloys

While not typically used for utensils and heavy-duty constructions, copper has more unique properties than other everyday metals. First of all, the excellent electrical conductivity makes it great for making things like cables and electrical components. Like aluminum, it’s very machinable which makes it easy to create intricate products. Other than cables and wires, you’ll most commonly see copper used in your everyday plumbing due to its great corrosion resistance. There’s no rust or wear from water compared to other metals.

Zinc

Zinc is easily available from any local distributor, and is great for many reasons. Due to its low melting point, it’s very easily recycled and reused whenever necessary. It is used to galvanize iron and steel, which will allow them to resist rust. You can also find it in some medicines and such.

Want to learn more about what types of metals can benefit your business? Visit us at Metals4U.com today!