Recovery baseline workbook
A structured way to define saleable versus charged metal, reconcile operations and finance definitions, and produce a defensible recovery baseline per press.
Resources
Things worth havingeven if you never buy.
Baseline templates, defect taxonomies, readiness checklists and the arithmetic behind a recovery point. Built for extrusion engineers, not for lead capture.
Templates & tools
Start withthe baseline.
Reject cause taxonomy
A standard breakdown of dimensional, surface, twist, temper and handling rejects so quality data becomes comparable across shifts, presses and sites.
What a recovery point is worth
Model the annual value of one recovery point against your tonnage, alloy cost and press utilisation — before any vendor conversation.
Die-trial cost model
Convert proving pushes into press hours, scrapped metal and delayed orders, so trial reduction can be argued in currency.
Plant readiness checklist
Network segmentation, OT access, sensor mounting, power and cooling, and the records you need before a deployment starts.
Security & architecture pack
Architecture diagram, data-flow description, isolation model, die-IP protections and the audit-log schema, available under NDA.
Guides
Deeper readingby role.
Building the autonomy business case
How to structure a paid pilot with a single success metric, an audited baseline and a defined exit — and how to present it to a capital committee.
Isothermal extrusion in practice
Taper strategy, ram-speed profiles, breakthrough behaviour and exit-temperature control across alloy and die families.
Per-rack temper traceability
What OEM quality audits actually ask for, and how prediction plus an immutable audit trail changes the conversation.
Flow balance before the first push
Using twin sweeps to pre-apply die correction, and how trial counts should be measured to make the value legible.
Connecting a press safely
OPC UA and Modbus mapping, network segmentation, write-path controls, envelopes and the rollback model.
The extrusion autonomy landscape
Where press controllers, gauges, furnace controllers, flow simulators and MES stop — and what closing the loop actually requires.
The reference
One diagramworth keeping.
Ram, container, billet, die, runout — and the four measurements that decide whether the push made money: exit temperature, wall deviation, surface, recovery.
Available as a printable reference sheet on request.
Benchmarks
Where extruderstypically sit.
| Metric | Common range | What separates the top quartile |
|---|---|---|
| Press recovery | 78–90% | Consistent taper and speed control across shifts, not just on days |
| Reject rate | 0.5–4% | Defect attribution to specific dies rather than diffuse quality effort |
| Proving pushes per new die | 2–6 | Flow balancing before press time is committed |
| T5/T6 first-pass yield | 88–98% | Quench control tied to predicted properties, not fixed recipes |
| Energy per tonne | Highly variable | Full aging batches and scheduled energy windows |
| Shift-to-shift variance | Often larger than press-to-press | Encoded craft available on every shift |
Glossary
The vocabularythis site assumes.
If you work outside extrusion, these are the terms that carry the most weight on this site.
Billet & taper
The preheated aluminium log pushed through the die. Taper is the deliberate front-to-back temperature gradient that keeps exit temperature flat across the push.
Recovery
Saleable metal as a share of charged metal. The number a plant director is paid on, and the one with three competing internal definitions.
Die trial
Proving pushes burned to correct a new die's flow imbalance, twist and bow — scrapped metal and press time treated as a fixed cost.
Die line & pickup
Longitudinal surface defects caused by die bearing condition and metal adhesion — the dominant reject on anodising-grade architectural work.
Temper (T5 / T6)
Mechanical property states developed through quench rate and aging. T6 requires solution treatment and a controlled quench; T5 is press-quenched.
Butt & offcut loss
The unextruded billet remnant and the ends cut to length — the two most persistent sources of yield loss after rejects.
The loop, explained
Perceive. Plan. Push.Prove. Learn.
One closed loop runs at the plant edge on every billet. Nothing is advisory-only unless you want it to be — and nothing acts outside an envelope your engineers signed.
01Perceive
Sense the billet, the profile, the temper
Fused line-scan and RGB vision, thermal imaging, laser gauging and press PLC telemetry describe the push as it happens — dimensions, wall thickness, straightness, surface, exit temperature.
02Plan
Set the taper, the speed, the die, the quench
The agents plan billet-heating taper, ram speed, pressure and temperature, die-flow correction, quench rate, stretch, cut length and aging recipe as one coupled decision, not five isolated setpoints.
03Act
Run with adaptive control at the press
Approved moves write back into the press PLC, the furnace and the quench inside bounded action envelopes, with rollback and alarm interlocks wired to the same fail-safe stop your line already trusts.
04Prove
Predict defects and recovery before they cost metal
The loop predicts off-spec dimensions, surface defects, twist and temper misses, and flags die-trial risk early enough to change the push instead of scrapping it.
05Learn
Every correction trains the plant
Engineer approvals and corrections are logged to an immutable, assurance-grade audit trail and fed back into training — so the site's craft compounds instead of retiring.
Measured on the press
The metricsthese resources target.
Every Extruon engagement starts with a baseline and ends with an audited delta. These are the target bands we underwrite in a paid pilot.
+4.2 pts
Press recovery uplift, saleable vs charged metal
−38%
Surface-defect and dimensional rejects
−61%
Die-trial pushes before a die is signed off
−12%
kWh per tonne across heating, quench and aging
Target outcome bands modelled from design-partner baselines. [ASPIRATIONAL — to be replaced with audited pilot results.]
Seven agents, one orchestrator
The plant runs as a crewof specialised agents.
Each agent owns a physical stage of the line, senses it directly, and acts inside an approved envelope. A plant orchestrator arbitrates between them so nobody optimises recovery at the expense of temper.
Heat-and-press agent
Controls billet temperature taper, ram speed, breakthrough pressure, container and die temperature, and exit temperature to keep metal flow balanced and the profile on dimension.
Profile-and-defect agent
Senses and predicts cross-section dimensions, wall thickness, straightness and surface defects — die lines, pickup, scoring, blisters — from fused vision and laser gauge.
Die-and-flow agent
Optimises die temperature, correction and flow balance to cut die trials and the twist and bow that send profiles back to the stretcher.
Quench-and-stretch agent
Controls press-quench cooling rate and stretch-straightening so temper and flatness land inside spec on the first pass.
Cut-and-age agent
Controls cut-to-length, batching and aging ovens to reach T5 and T6 mechanical properties without over-soaking the oven.
Robot-and-handling agent
Drives robotic pulling, stacking, racking and packing of long, hot, delicate profiles — the handling nobody wants to staff at 3am.
Yield-and-throughput agent
Optimises press recovery, scrap, butt and offcut loss, and energy per tonne across the whole line rather than one station at a time.
Extrusion-knowledge agent
Answers metallurgy and die-design questions with citations into your die books, profile drawings, press recipes and alloy specs.
Press-and-die digital twin
Simulates billet heating, metal flow through the die, quench and profile properties — hitting the target profile and yield before the push, not after the scrap.
Resources
Take the templates.Keep the baseline.
Everything here is useful whether or not you deploy Extruon. Tell us which resource you want and we will send it.
Land on one press. Expand press by press, module by module, site by site.