Extrusion Press

An extrusion press forces a billet of metal through a shaped die opening under very high pressure, usually applied by a hydraulic ram, so that the metal emerges as a continuous length with the die's cross-sectional profile, a method used to produce long, uniform shapes such as rods, tubes and structural sections. The English inventor Joseph Bramah patented the first extrusion process in 1797, building a hand-operated hydraulic press to force soft lead through a die to manufacture seamless lead pipe. Extrusion was later extended to harder metals such as copper, brass, and eventually aluminum and steel, as press capacities and die materials improved through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the direct hydraulic extrusion press remains the standard machine for producing aluminum structural and architectural profiles.