Base Metal

Aluminum

Is a silvery-white, lightweight metal, soft and malleable. Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust and the second-most used metal after steel, due in part to its versatility and efficiency. Aluminium is remarkable for the low density and for being corrosion-resistant due to the phenomenon of passivation. It is often used as an alloy because aluminium itself is not particularly strong. They are very important in the construction of aeroplanes and other forms of transport. It provides strong structural support to machined parts and construction material without adding excess weight to the products, which allows for more efficient fuel consumption in vehicles.

Copper

Copper is found in nature as a pure metal and it was the source of the first metal to be used by humans, to be smelted from its ore, to be cast into a shape in a mold and it was the first metal to be purposefully alloyed with another metal (tin) to create bronze. Pure copper has a reddish-orange color. It is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, as a building material, and as a constituent of various metal alloys.

Lead

Lead is a corrosion-resistant metal that has been used since ancient times due to the fact it is easily extracted from ore and easy to mold and shape. Lead is a soft, malleable, ductile and heavy metal with a bright and silvery color that when is exposed to air it tarnishes. It is rarely found in nature as a free metal but It is usually found in ore with other metals such as copper, zinc and silver. This metal has been used by humans for a variety of purposes an nowadays it is used in the construction industry, in sailboats, also used to make statues and sculptures, as bullets and as a radiation shield in X ray equipment among others.

Magnesium alloys

It is the lightest structural metal currently available in the world. Besides, when It is alloyed it provides great tensile strength making it the ideal material for automotive applications as minimizes the vehicles total weight which brings up new applications in the aviation, aerospace sectors and also electronics due to the good mechanical and electrical properties and low weight (mobile phones, laptop and tablet computers, cameras, and other electronic components). For this reason its use keeps increasing to replace steel and aluminum based components.

Magnesium granules and powder

Magnesium granules are used coated and uncoated to reduce sulphur in pig iron. Magnesium powder is used in pyrotechnics and for military purposes.

Magnesium ingots and mg end pieces

Pure magnesium is used as alloy to increase tensile strength both in aluminum wrought and cast alloys. It is also added when producing pre-alloys for the treatment of nodular cast iron. Magnesium is an excellent reducing agent widely used in metallurgy. End pieces are the remainders of pure Mg ingots from powder production having the identical chemical composition as the pure Mg ingots. Due to their geometry, end pieces melt faster allowing for fast corrections to obtain the given final chemical composition

Nickel

Is the fifth most abundant element in the Earth, but most of that nickel is located in the core. It is a silvery-white metal and almost 80% is used mainly to make stainless steel and other alloys stronger and better able to withstand extreme temperatures and corrosive environments.

Tin

Tin is a soft, malleable and silvery-white metal. It is corrosion- resistant and most often found mixed, or alloyed, with other metals so it is used as a protective coating on other metals. Tin cans are probably the most familiar example of this application. A tin can is actually made from steel recovered both to the inside and outside with a thin layer of tin to keep the steel from rusting. It is also used to produce glass following the Pilkington process but Tin alloys are also employed in many ways: as solder for joining pipes or electric circuits, bell metal, babbit metal and dental amalgams.

Zinc

After iron, aluminium, and copper, zinc is the fourth most common metal we use today. A silvery-white metal with a blue tinge that tarnishes in air. An important quality of zinc is its ability to resist corrosion and therefore protect other metals. Consequently about half of all the zinc that is produced is used in zinc galvanizing, which is the process of adding thin layers of zinc to iron or steel to prevent rusting. It is used to protect buildings, cars, nails, wire, pipes and more.