[Amps] Aluminum alloys for panels?

[Peter Chadwick]

With unknown or hard alloys, you can have trouble with the stuff cracking if you want to bend it. Heat treatment is a specialist job, but for rough and ready work at home, I find that smearing the back of the sheet with liquid soap and heating the front until the soap turns brown usually anneals it enough to prevent cracking. Howver, be aware that aluminium alloys have the peculiar (at least to me) property of hardening with time after heat treatment, so don't anneal today and expect it to be OK in a month's time!

73

Peter G3RZP