Aluminium vs steel

[Moonshane]

Lol

i image with my sketchbook :0)

[faulksy]

have you considered st/st shane, equaly as strong as steel and no rust, you can reduce the wall thickness to reduce weight and i can probably get you some from work, foc of course

[Zakalwe]

have you considered st/st shane, equaly as strong as steel and no rust, you can reduce the wall thickness to reduce weight and i can probably get you some from work, foc of course

Its a pig to work with though.

[faulksy]

Your right zak, but if your cautious it's great

sent from my fone using fingers

[Tiki]

When using aluminium for cars they say aluminium is half the strength of steel but a third the weight so they can double the panel thickness, maintaining the strength, but have 2/3 the weight. So I suppose that really you would need 6mm walls.

 

However panels are flat not round and I suspect that 3mm steel is overkill anyway.

Your tube will be fine as it is.

A proper structural core would significantly increase the rigidity of your tube. The core would need to be virtually incompressible and properly bonded to the tube walls. 'Builders pour foam' would therefore be useless. (Medium grade structural foam is very hard to mark with your fingernail.)

Good luck with your project.