LinkedAlu extrudes furniture profiles on 26 presses from 500 to 5,000 MT, in walls from 0.8 mm and up to a 540 mm circumscribed circle. That spread matters more in furniture than in most extrusion work: a 20 mm glass-door bead and a 120 mm wardrobe jamb can sit on the same purchase order. Alloys are 6063, 6061, 6463 and 6082 in T4, T5 or T6, grooves are held to ±0.1 mm, anodizing runs AA10 and AA15, and the minimum order is 500 kg per profile whether the die already exists or not. Extrusion, anodizing, sawing and CNC machining all happen in the same plant in Foshan, and profiles ship FOB Shenzhen or Guangzhou, cut to your list.

Most complaints about aluminium furniture are not extrusion faults. They are drawing faults: a groove toleranced like a window frame, a hinge screw that lands in a 0.9 mm wall, a finish chosen without checking what 15 µm of anodizing does to a push fit. This page is about catching those before the die is cut.

What we extrude for furniture

Furniture profiles are a family, not a shape. Six of them cover most of the work, and each one fails in its own place.

The alloy decides the face. It does not decide the stiffness.

6063 is the default for anything with a visible face. It extrudes thin, complex sections at speed, anodizes evenly, and most furniture drawings already specify it. The mechanical differences between the two are set out in our 6063 versus 6061 comparison; for furniture, the practical point is that 6063 gives the cleanest anodized face at the lowest extrusion cost.

6463 is the one most suppliers do not offer and most designers do not ask for. It is the bright-dip anodizing grade: iron and other impurities are held tighter than in 6063, so a clear or bright anodized face comes out clean instead of hazy grey. If the profile is a visible handle, a frame trim or a mirror surround, where the metal itself is the finish, 6463 is what decides whether the part looks expensive or looks like hardware.

6061 and 6082 go where the profile carries load rather than looks: table legs, bench frames, brackets, structural rails. Both are considerably stronger than 6063 in T6 and both anodize duller. 6061 machines more cleanly; 6082 is the grade most European structural drawings name. Do not put either on visible trim unless the trim is also structural.

Temper is a separate decision. T5 for thin decorative sections that have to stay straight; T6 where the section is doing work and a little straightening is acceptable; T4 where the part is bent or formed after extrusion. Other tempers are quoted on request, and any alloy outside 6063, 6061, 6082 and 6463 goes to the die and press before we quote.

Here is the part that changes decisions. 6063 and 6061 have almost the same elastic modulus, around 69 GPa, so changing alloy barely moves deflection. A shelf that sags in 6063 still sags in 6061. What governs sag is span and section depth: for the same load and the same profile, doubling the span multiplies deflection by eight under a centre point load and by sixteen under a uniform load. Shortening a wardrobe shelf by a third does more than any alloy change, and it costs nothing. The same geometry argument is why a 40 × 80 section laid flat is not a heavier 40 × 40: stood on edge, it is roughly eight times stiffer in the direction that matters.

Wall thickness: 0.8 mm is a capability, not a specification

0.8 mm is the thinnest wall we run. At that thickness the limiting factor stops being strength and becomes screw purchase, dent resistance, and whether the profile arrives straight after packing. Furniture sections that fail in service usually fail at one of five places, and none of them is the extrusion itself.

Tolerance: ±0.1 mm on the groove, and where precision costs you money

Groove width and position are held to ±0.1 mm. Everything else is made to GB/T 5237 high precision as standard, or to EN 755 or ASTM B221 where the drawing names them, and noted on the mill certificate.

What costs money is not the standard. It is the number of dimensions you tighten. Every dimension pushed below the high-precision table slows the press, adds straightening and raises scrap, and that cost lands in the per-kilogram price whether or not the dimension matters in assembly. Mark the two or three dimensions that decide whether the door closes: usually groove width, groove position from a datum face, cut length, and squareness at the mitre. Leave the rest at standard.

Finish moves fits, and this is where furniture drawings go wrong most often. AA15 anodizing puts about 15 µm on every face, so an 18 mm groove closes by roughly 0.03 mm. A 70 µm powder coat closes the same groove by about 0.14 mm. If the panel was a push fit before finishing, it is an interference fit after. Decide the fit after finishing and write that on the drawing.

Panels move as well. An 18 mm MDF door is rarely 18.00 mm, and it swells on the humid side of a coastal climate. Tolerance the groove against the measured panel, not the nominal one.

Finish: anodizing for the face you touch, powder for the colour you cannot anodize

Anodizing at AA10 or AA15 is the finish for visible faces. It keeps the metal reading as metal and it does not chip at a mitre the way a coating does. Standard colours are silver, champagne, bronze, black and gold; other colours are quoted on request. Black anodized shows handling marks and fingerprints more than any other colour, and gloss black more than matte. Worth knowing before a showroom sample is signed off. The wider trade-offs between anodizing, powder coating and PVDF are covered in surface finishes compared.

Powder coating is for colour ranges anodizing cannot reach, and for parts where the surface has to hide fine die lines. It builds 60–80 µm, which is exactly why it changes sliding fits, and it chips at sharp corners, so agree a touch-up plan for site assembly. PVDF is rarely specified on furniture because of cost; we quote it when a project asks for it.

Consistency between batches is the quieter problem. Dye concentration, bath temperature and the alloy batch all move colour. Agree a ΔE limit and a sealed master sample before the first production run, keep the sample, and book reorders against the same anodizing batch where quantity allows. Without a master sample, "black" is an opinion.

Order mechanics: 500 kg, one die, one cut list

The minimum is 500 kg per profile, whether the die is new or existing. That is a real threshold for furniture: it lets you run a pilot across five or six sections and test assembly before committing to a container of one profile.

Die tooling is quoted per project rather than published, because the cost follows section complexity and the press it runs on. Ask for tooling as its own line in the quotation, with die ownership, storage and what happens to the die if you move supplier. Getting that in writing before you pay is worth more than a discount on the first order.

There is no standard length. Profiles are cut to your cut list, which is why the cut list matters as much as the section drawing. A 20' container takes up to 5.85 m; a 40' takes 6.0 m and can carry two lengths. Cuts under 5 m carry a sawing charge, because short pieces mean more set-ups and more offcut.

Packing is specified per order: protection film, interleaving between profiles, end caps, and bundle labels that match the packing list. Damage on anodized faces is almost always a packing decision taken to save a few dollars, and it is a claim that is hard to win once the container is opened at the far end.

Terms are FOB Shenzhen or Guangzhou. Payment is 30% deposit and 70% against copy B/L or before shipment, by T/T; small orders shipped EXW are settled in full before dispatch. Quality feedback is expected within 10 days of receipt, and claims are checked against the mill certificate and the approved drawing before anything else. Lead time is quoted per order, because it depends on whether the die exists and how the anodizing line is loaded that week. We would rather give you a date we can hold than a standard number that slips.

What arrives with the shipment

Every order ships with a mill test certificate to GB/T 5237, or to EN 755 or ASTM B221 where the order names them, a dimensional report on the critical dimensions of your drawing, and the anodizing class actually run. The plant holds ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001.

If your customer audits the project, ask for a pre-production sample signed against the drawing before the batch runs, plus a first-article report on groove width and cut length. It costs less than sorting a container.

What to send us

Six things get a furniture profile quoted properly: the section drawing as DXF, DWG or a dimensioned PDF; the alloy and temper, or the job the part has to do; the two or three dimensions that decide assembly; the finish and a colour reference; the cut list with quantities; and the destination port.

Hinge holes, handle cut-outs and mitre cuts are machined in the same plant as the press; CNC machining of aluminum profiles covers what is better cut before anodizing and what is better left until after.

If you have a section already running elsewhere, send it with the panel thickness and the span — we will tell you where it is likely to fail before we quote. If you only have a sketch, send the sketch: die design is done in-house, and a section can usually be adjusted for wall balance and metal flow long before a die is cut.