Ford teams with aluminum supplier to craft new alloy for F-150

The agreement will facilitate the development of other automotive alloys using the Micromill technology. The alloys will be developed with the help of Alcoa’s Micromill technology which creates aluminum alloy with 40% more formability than the automotive aluminum now used.

If using the new aluminum material will go on as planned, Ford will be able to make the truck weigh 700 pounds lighter (317 kilos) than the earlier model with fuel efficiency increased by 5 up to 29 percent.

“Light-weighting enables us to design vehicles with great customer attributes – like the F-150, which can tow more, haul more, accelerate quicker and stop faster than the previous F-150, and is more fuel-efficient than ever”, Raj Nair, Ford group vice-president and CTO of Global Product Development, said.

The Dearborn automaker said starting in the fourth quarter of 2015, F-150s will start being made with Alcoa’s Micromill aluminum in parts like door interiors, tailgates and fenders. The increased material strength also allows for the use of thinner aluminum sheet without compromising dent resistance.

Alcoa’s breakthrough Micromill technology offers highly differentiated automotive material with strength, weight, formability and surface quality combinations previously impossible. These alloys will be used on Ford vehicles to enhance design flexibility and vehicle performance.

The Micromill technology is regarded as the fastest and the most efficient system in the world for casting and rolling aluminum.

Ford plans to build future F-150 models with stronger yet lighter aluminum material.

“The door inner is one of the most hard parts in automotive stamping”, Peter Friedman, Ford global manager of structures and stamping, research & advanced engineering, said.

Engineers from Ford have already validated the Micromill aluminum alloy in meeting the rigorous requirements for the manufacture of high-quality parts like those that make up the complex components in the F-150.

Nair declined to say whether the process would be used on the Super Duty pickups, Ford Expedition or Lincoln Navigator, all of which will use aluminum bodies in their next redesign.

Announcing the agreement, Alcoa’s press release stated that the Micromill technology would decrease the transformation time to aluminum coil from 20 days to 20 minutes, thus saving vast production time, while increasing productivity. New alloys will improve design flexibility on lightweight parts and provide better vehicle performance – helping Ford produce the types of quality, lightweight vehicles customers want.