Online Metals Blog

A special thanks to the customer who called in and asked what the GP means in our teflon sheet GP skived.
The answer is “general purpose”

We have so many products that use acronyms, and we’ve become so used to using them, that we forget how important explainations can be.

If it helps, here are some other fun acronyms and their definitions…
PTFE - polytetrafluoroethylene, the official scientific name for Dupon’t trademarked name “Teflon”

UHMW - Ultra high molecular weight polyethylene.

ULTEM - Ultem is a family of polyimide thermoplastic resins, of type amorphous polyetherimide.

CRES - Corrosion Resistant

HRAP - Hot Rolled Annealed and Pickled

DOM - Drawn Over Mandrel

TGP - turned, ground and polished (for round bar)

CDS – Cold drawn seamless (for 4130 tube)

ERW – Electric resistant weld (for A513 Tube) We don’t currently carry this.

FOB – Freight on board Also, Fresh of Broiler for all you burger fans!

ASTM – American Society for Testing and Material. This is one of the standards that metals comply to.

ETP - electrolytic tough pitch, a level of refinement (copper 110)

As the date draws near, the OLMers can’t help but be SUPER EXCITED about…

The semi annual gathering of geeks, nerds, do it yourselfers, robot builders, engineers, scientists, inventors, trekkies, dweebs, manufacturers, and well….simply put…OUR PEOPLE!

We’ll be there in October, and we’d love to see you there too.

Denny has been designing, fabricating, and flying armature high-power rockets for many years. He shared pictures of a 2 stage rocket that he built recently.

The first stage is made of 6061 aluminum tubing, with the fins made of 7075 aluminum sheet, all purchased from Online Metals.

One the last pic you can see it all painted and taken to flight. This is at a large experimental rocketry event held each year in Black Rock, Nevada.

This particular two-stage rocket can read altitudes of over 80,000 ft. (Note: the upper stage [red rocket] is made of composite G10 fiberglass.)

A retired Chemistry professor, and OnlineMetals customer sent me a very interesting and educational e-mail. My friends in the scientific community agree with him, in that older microscopes are built to a higher standard. The fact that he used OnlineMetals materials to incorporate LED lighting is outstanding. Here’s his e-mail…

“Research grade microscopes generally are made using very high quality materials. Manufacturers have tended to make them with extreme care and precision. Because they are precision instruments, they are typically handled very carefully by researchers. Unlike many other types of laboratory instruments they can thus last for decades. Because many manufacturers have cut corners (some seriously) in recent years, researchers tend to prefer the older well built microscopes to the mass produced ones made today that often have inappropriate plastic parts.

The robustness of these instruments presents a problem–manufacturers cannot be expected to maintain spare parts inventories for instruments made decades ago! Microscopes made after about 1950 or so generally had built in light sources. Electrical parts are not as robust as the mechanical parts, and they fail. There is a particularly serious problem with light bulbs. Microscopes typically use special flat filament light bulbs, and as time passes the stock of available ones seems to dwindle. High power white light emitting diodes have been developed recently. The light from many models of these is emitted from a 4mm square surface, and is typically quite uniform along this surface.

When coloured light is required, LEDs are available in many different wavelengths eliminating the need for filters.

High power LEDs require heat sinks. Many microscopes have slide in bulb holders. I have adapted many microscopes that formerly used difficult or impossible to obtain flat filament bulbs to use LEDs by
machining holders for the LEDs. I have fabricated many LED holders for microscopes from OnlineMetals aluminium round bar. The holders must be turned to rather high precision, and the LED emitter needs to be quite close to the position where the filament was on the original holder. Instead of lasting 25 to 50 hours, the LEDs are supposed to last at least a thousand times that long!

One of the attached images show a Wild M40 microscope with a LED adapter attached while the other shows the machined aluminium holder with its LED attached with nylon screws.

The red arrow points to the holder on the microscope.

The LED illuminator actually is dramatically superior to the original one because the colour is much closer to daylight.”

These telescope mounts were built by our friend, and long time customer, Tom at ImaginationWorks.
“I modified the mount with material I bought from OnlineMetals.”
This is a CG (computer graphics) model of the stock mount.

How it should look when finished.

The aluminum colored parts are material, bought from you and machined.



Last is my mount in use. The cone shaped part on the mount base is also machined material from you. As are the rings and stuff.

Tom added this message to the end of his e-mail to us. We wanted to share it with our bloggers.
“I would just like to say how grateful I am, for the way you do business. Being able to buy material cut to length by the inch is wonderful. Because of minimum shipping costs, I try and accumulate as much stock as I can. I never hesitate to say what a great company yours is.”

Thanks Tom. Your business, kind words, and referrals mean a lot to us.

Here are two semi-automatic telegraph keys (usually called “bug”) for use in amateur radio morse code transmitting. They are of a non-traditional design, in that they use magnets rather than springs to generate a series of “dots.” Most of their construction is of metals purchased from OnlineMetals - the bases are of cut-to-length steel that has been powder coated, and the mechanisms are made from
2024-T4 aluminum.

Their creator is a ham radio operator interested in morse code. he recently retired from a scientific research career in which he learned machining in order to build research instruments that were not commercially available. He is currently experimenting with a number of novel designs for telegraphic instruments.

“Companies such as yours that offer cut materials in small quantities are very important in supporting amateur machinists.”

These are wonderful. Thank you for sending them. It’s great to see someone interested morse code. Important in history, still used today, never to be forgotten.

Tracy is a local Seattle artist who makes some gorgeous belt buckles with our non-ferrous metals.

She picks up materials in our on-site Will Call, and might build a cross buckle for our Will Call guru Travis.

This Marketing Director is officially jealous, because these buckles are great! I’m going to have to get one myself.

Tracy writes “Thank you for supporting the art community and being available for us.”

Tracy, thanks for using our materials to make such beautiful product. It’s a pleasure to work with the art community. Both here in Seattle, and around the world!

Ray Russell from RoPro Design specializes in designing and building hi-tech prototypes. They focus mainly on the mobile robotics market.

This is a low cost version of the Mars rover that they were tasked by NASA to design and build. It will be used for testing here on Earth. The 6-wheel rocker-boogie suspension is built from thin-wall, chrome-moly tubing purchased from our good friends at OnlineMetals. Thanks for the opportunity to preview our robot!

My husband and I have a spud gun. (Unless it’s illegal, in which case, you never read this.) It’s 4′ ABS, and we’re pretty impressed with the flaming potatos we can launch across the Columbia River. I’ve been proud of it.

But now that I’ve seen this bad boy my gun will never be the same.

is a supersonic breech loading all aluminum spud gun.

They use OnlineMetals materials whenever possible, and we thank them for that. As for the details of this gun, I could try to describe it, but they do a much better job! Check it out!

Slater Tools uses OnlineMetals brass plates to make inserts for our Slater Tool’s brand Rotary Broaching Tool Holders. You can see the part numbers engraved backwards into the brass for the mold. The tool holder shown here can be used to make hexagon, hexalobular, square, spline, and polygon holes in metal parts on a CNC machine, lathe, or mill.