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Ties That Bind: How Connectors Unleash the Genius of T-slot Aluminum Profiles

Framing Tech T-slot Connectors

Stone Age arrow head500,000 years ago in southern Africa, primitive Homo sapiens first bound stone blades to wooden spears, creating the spearpoint. Spearpoints were revolutionary as weaponry, and as the first “composite tools”—combining components.

— Nicholas R. Longrich
Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Bath
The Conversation, December 29, 2021:
“How a Handful of Prehistoric Geniuses Launched Humanity’s Technological Revolution”

Last November we wrote about the ways fasteners and other Framing Tech accessories can enhance your extruded aluminum creations. For December, we’ll end the year by focusing specifically on one key category of accessory, namely, aluminum connectors. This particular type of component allows you to take full advantage of the inherently modular nature of extruded aluminum profiles, and makes it possible to create a wide range of sturdy, customized fabrications, from workbenches and aquarium stands to book shelves and industrial machine guards—and whatever else your imagination can conceive of.

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Let T-Slot Fasteners and Other Accessories Enhance Your Extruded Aluminum Creations

Framing Tech T-slot Fasteners and Accessories

Whether you’re working on a full structural or modular aluminum framing project or a more simple task, Framing Tech has the pieces you need to build a complete and economical solution.

Our extruded aluminum T-slot framing (metric profiles and inch profiles) come in all shapes and sizes. Yet these aluminum extrusions can’t just assemble themselves. Specialty fasteners, connectors, and other accessories are needed to attach one piece solidly to another to create a stable structure. And still other accessories extend the practical utility of your fabrications, and even add aesthetic value to what you build.

Here is an overview of those specialty fasteners and other accessories.

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What Are You Going to Build with Your Extruded Aluminum Framing Profiles?

Aluminum extrusions

Framing Tech’s modular aluminum extrusions are used extensively in various settings—from large industrial complexes to in-house ateliers to private homes. The framed fabrications, which are lightweight, sturdy, and rust-resistant, are made up of extruded aluminum profiles of various lengths (metric or inch), with a variety of connectors and fasteners to hold the components together. Accessories of all types, such as doors, panels, and frame-to-floor leveling feet, can be added as needed. The easy-to-install and alter-as-needed profiles require very few tools for assembly. One might even think of them as resilient Legos for grownups with tasks to tackle!

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Oh the Things You Can Make with Extruded Aluminum Framing

Aluminum extrusions

“Play opens up the imagination, which
then opens up new possibilities.”

— Alfred Carlton Gilbert

Those lines are uttered by actor Jason Alexander playing inventor, magician, and toy maker A.C. Gilbert in the 2008 biographical film The Man Who Saved Christmas. You can preview the film in this trailer:

Visitors to our blog, of a certain age, will probably recall with great nostalgia what is surely Gilbert’s most famous invention and one of the most popular playthings of their childhood, namely, the inimitable Erector Set. Produced by the A.C. Gilbert Company, “Erector Set” was a brand of metal toy construction kits first patented in 1913. Basic Erector Set parts included various sizes of flat beams, made with real steel, with regularly spaced holes for assembly using nuts and bolts, and room for additional parts and accessories, including little electric motors. The only limit was your imagination.

1922 Erector Set ad
From a 1922 advertisement for Erector Set (Source)

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All Hail the Versatile T-bolt

T-bolt with nut

If you are as fastidious about your workstation as Martha Stewart is about her table setting, you always ensure that there is never a screw out of place or a wobbly chair at your desk. Framing fasteners are the vital connectors that keep materials and machinery secure. For example, when we commit to piecing together DYI Ikea furniture, we are scrupulous in employing the myriad bits and pieces as directed. While we may fret and fume during the assembly process, nuts and bolts ensure the end product looks and functions as advertised.

Bolt vs. Screw

T-bolt example

Bolts are externally threaded fasteners installed with the use of proper nuts that are fitted using torque. Bolts are typically used to couple unthreaded objects. The threads spiraling on the circular surface of the bolts provide exceptionally sturdy bonds in conjunction with a nut.

Screw example

Screws are also externally threaded fasteners. They can be inserted into premade holes or perforated surfaces and sometimes create threads during installation.

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Framing Tech Machine Enclosures: Ensuring Safety First in the Workplace

Machine Guard

You are driving by the well-manicured lawns in your rural neighborhood, admiring the lush hydrangeas and abundant azaleas. Suddenly, out of nowhere, something small hits your windshield. Instantaneously, a crack appears. The culprit? A pebble launched by a landscaper’s string trimmer. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much to have it repaired. Yet, while windshields can be easily repaired, the human body cannot be restored quite so easily.

One might think of damage or injuries in the workplace as out-of-the-ordinary as projectile rocks on a sunny morning in the country. However, statistics prove otherwise. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one worker died every 99 minutes from a work-related injury in 2019. The number of casualties would be significantly higher without adequate safeguards in the workplace. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, worker deaths in America are down, on average, from about 38 worker deaths a day in 1970 to 15 a day in 2019.

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T-slot Aluminum Inspiration: Summer Solutions

T-slot profiles at Framing Tech Factory Floor

Considering that aluminum is the most abundant metal in Earth’s crust, it should come as little surprise that its use in the industrial world is equally abundant. From transportation and packaging to computer casings and household goods, you will find aluminum everywhere, and often in plain sight.

In recent years, manufacturers have even made it possible for the average person to take aluminum into their own hands and configure it to individual needs, thanks to T-slot aluminum extrusions and related accessories.

T-slot aluminum aquarium stand
Aquarium stand

Sturdy, custom-designed aquarium stands are lately among the most popular fabrications, but those just scratch the surface of what is possible. Meet a few of the projects that caught our eye, and the people from across the country who have used extruded T-slot aluminum profiles to make their living space creatively conducive to their needs.

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Framing Tech in Motion: Introducing Our New Line of Modular Belt Conveyors

Factory Roller-and-Belt Conveyor System

What do a watering can, a pack of mothballs, a gallon of milk, and a sun hat have in common? Nothing! Except that they may be travel companions on a conveyor belt at a Target or Walmart.

Automated conveyor systems have long been a familiar part of our commercial and industrialized landscape, transporting materials large and small, heavy and light—from coal and cars to diamonds and cigars. Some conveyor belts follow a circuitous path in assembly line operations, while others traverse an open expanse across many miles. And many simply move objects a distance of a few feet in a straight line.

We are proud to announce the introduction of a Framing Tech modular conveyor system for use in the U.S. market. Currently, we are offering flatbed belt conveyors, but plan to expand that offering soon as more interest develops.

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Carbon Fiber Tube: All the Advantages of Aluminum and Carbon

Carbon fiber tube blueprint

Over the last few decades, carbon fiber has gone from being an exotic, space-age material, infrequently used, to becoming increasingly prevalent in all aspects of our rapidly advancing, technology-driven world. Carbon fiber tubes, extruded profiles, and fabricated sheets are now utilized extensively in aviation, automation, construction, manufacturing, medical equipment, military and sporting gear, and much more. Faster, more fuel-efficient planes, boats, and cars achieve these properties precisely because their frames and other components are fabricated with carbon fiber. The material’s durability, strength, longevity, low-maintenance costs, and low weight have also propelled the wind power industry by allowing for longer and more rigid turbine blades.

This superhero of materials, carbon fiber, is more resilient, lightweight, heat- and corrosion-resistant, and reliable than aluminum or steel. Who doesn’t want to drive a carbon fiber Batmobile? Carbon fiber is even being showcased in clothing. The spiffy carbon fiber fedora crafted by Biltmore is not just wearable but looks modishly futuristic.

But our main focus in this article is carbon fiber tubing: what it is, how it’s made, and what you can do with it.

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Aluminum: The Shape of Things to Come

Aluminum cladding on Titanic Museum
Aluminum pyramid at apex of Washington Monument
Aluminum apex of Washington Monument showing inscriptions on its east and north faces (source)

From planes and trains to the cellphone in your hand and the versatile roll of foil in your pantry, aluminum is omnipresent in today’s fabricated world. Which should come as no surprise, considering it is the most abundant metal in Earth’s crust. Yet, it is hard to imagine that aluminum was once prized more than gold! In fact, despite its abundance, aluminum was valued so highly in the 19th century because it was so difficult to obtain. It was so special, indeed, that in 1884 this rare “metal of kings” earned a prestigious perch atop the Washington monument in the shape of a cast pyramid.

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