DIY Van Building with 8020 Extruded Aluminum | Hacker News Reader

DIY Van Building with 8020 Extruded Aluminum

engineerswhovanlife.com

44 pointswalterbell36 comments

One thing to note: if you are getting this quantity of profile, aliexpress can save you a bundle. Shipping is expensive and slow, but the cost savings on the profile can make it worth it.

edit: Went back and looked at my quote, looked like 2040 was $1 per 200mm. Shipping cost around another $1.30. 8020 Inc, the supplier used in the article, is more like $1 per 50mm, so even with the shipping it was a huge savings.

What seller has prices that low? I've been looking through and can't find anything near even double that price.

My purchase was back in Feb 2020, maybe prices have gone through the roof? I was mistaken above, that quote was one I didn't end up going with, the one I did buy from was "Shanghai Common Metal Products Co., Ltd.", landed it was $523.52, that was 56m of 2040 and 11m of 2020 for a landed cost of $1 per 128mm length aggregate. Largely they charge by weight, and they cut my pieces to a variety of lengths, that order was 16 different lengths.

I'd recommend checking out this Van building YouTube channel if you're interested in using extruded aluminum for van building. https://youtube.com/c/HumbleRoad

It goes in depth on the topic, as that's the main method he uses.

Beware this article is, confusingly, an elaborate ad for a company called "80/20". In metric terms we would say an 8020 profile means 80mm x 20mm. However, the profiles shown in the article do not match this format, they use the term "8020" to refer to a company called "80/20".

By now, 8020 is almost the "kleenex" (generic term) for aluminum extrusion, which is only incidental to companies using variation of those names.

For those unfamiliar with extruded aluminum, https://hackaday.com/2021/05/25/getting-started-with-aluminu...

> T-slot extrusions used to be somewhat mysterious, but today they are quite common thanks to their use in many 3D printers ... The cheapest way to buy extrusion is to get it surplus in whatever lengths you can get — usually leftovers — and cut them to the size you want yourself ... There are many places you can buy extrusions and related items. Misumi is a common option as is 8020. The big suppliers like Grainger, Fastenal, and McMaster-Carr carry a lot of this sort of thing, but they are often pretty expensive.

Maybe in the US. Not elsewhere.

Yes, elsewhere. Anyone in the hobby CNC or 3d printer community knows this as 8020 or 2020 extrusion. the numbers actually are supposed to reference the dimensions of the beam... not a damn company name or the 80/20 principle. That seems like an attempt at hijacking an existing search term.

It's so hard to tell what's an ad these days that I'm not sure that this even qualifies.

I was also very confused by this. I kept thinking "that looks like 2020 extrusions, why does he keep harping on about 8020?".

Googled the company and found they've named themselves not after the dimensions of their products but the "80/20 rule".

Just weird.

The 20mm profile also comes in multiple widths and double thickness combinations, so there is indeed a 80x20mm profile (4x1).

Also, it’s 1 and 1.5 inch t slot, not 20mm.

Weird name indeed.

Hey! Authors here. Thanks for pointing this out, Walters comment addressed it very well. 8020 has become sort of the "kleenex" of extruded aluminum in the van world, especially. We added a quick blurb to clarify this on our guide this morning as I am sure others are confused as well. I will also say have no fear, our guides were created wayyy before 8020 tossed us an affiliate code to integrate, so it's not an ad. Hope that helps and thank you for reading!

Extrusion is really interesting stuff, my last client was a robotics company and it was absolutely everywhere. It's very easy to put together and there are all kinds of cool ways to utilize the tracks along the pieces. I've wondered if it would be cost effective to use as a substitute for dimensional lumber in some garage builds I've been kicking around (I need a new workbench and storage).

Very useful stuff.

Moxitec's L-shaped 1.5" extrusions can be used for largish frames with lightweight panels, https://moxitec.com/shop/ideas-and-inspiration-aluminum-fram... & https://moxitec.com/aluminum-framing

Need a new workbench you say? Something like this workbench? https://photos.app.goo.gl/Mwbtrzn4RYNVb8Ds5

Made out of this profile: https://photos.app.goo.gl/jaWeFdk3UutErpBW8

And storage: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Rvw64ZNaE4hskU5fA

Oh man, that is _exactly_ what I was after. I also love your storage setup! Thank you for sharing, I've added a bookmark to this post to my big Notion doc about garage projects. Very cool.

Thanks! My idea with the workbench is I have 4 of those 2'x4' benches (there are two in the photo above), and I can mix/match them as a 4'x8' assembly table, an infeed/outfeed/side feed table, the photo shows the table saw "side car", and the slide out platform that I store the table saw on. And the 2x4 sections can nicely store along the back and partial side of the garage for more space.

The idea with the profile was to be able to use it like T slot for attaching accessories to, but I haven't really made very good use of that yet. I've been doing mostly inside renovations this last couple years and the garage has been a mess, so I haven't made much use of it.

Where I am in Europe, it's standard for all interior framing (walls and ceilings) to be made from steel profiles. They are strong enough to hold up walls and doors, so I guess a workbench could work.

They come in standard lengths, so for walls you pretty much just lay them down and join then with self tapping screws. They even come with cutouts for wiring to pass through.

https://www.mfo.pl/en/drywall-framing-steel-profiles

External and structural walls are built from masonry.

Steel studs. Extremely common in North America, particularly in commercial applications, but it's sometimes used in residential buildings too.

FYI: They recommend buying a dedicated saw for aluminum and using a "special saw blade", which I assume they mean a "non-ferrous metal" blade? I've cut extrusion using just my normal woodworking miter saw and blade, cut it slow, and it worked great. The factory cut edge was slightly better, but I had a hard time telling which was which.

Cool take on van builds but many ways to skin a cat. If you’re going aluminum instead of wood why not just tig weld everything? (Can think of pro/cons both ways but I bias towards weld) I’ve seen the extruded aluminum on McMaster before and wasn’t familiar with any applications for it. It’s cool the joints are Allen key

Need to have equipment and skill to weld.

Indeed, but if someone is a “professional” van builder it could be a market edge if other vendors are not offering that approach

This, and why isn't there any fiberglass construction? Since most of the build isn't structural, you could use cheap insulation foam for the core (with epoxy resin, not polyester).

Fiberglass is quite easy to DIY and requires almost no tools, and no power tools. Most parts can be shipped in normal sized boxes, aside from the fabric. Whereas long tubes of 8020 need to be shipped via special handling. The fabric can be obtained locally from many hardware stores.

For sure, it’s tradeoffs all the way down. Fiberglass would lend well to a “production builder” that’s looking to leverage a mold for reproducibility. But I also do one-off fiberglass stuff so it has its place there too.

Your van is one accident away from getting completely totalled and destroyed. Van lifers that do it for while and not just for the Instagram attention prefer something they can rip out and reuse in a new build because they will inevitably be changing vehicles in the near to medium future.

What does that mean in terms of material and methods selection? No single answer in my opinion, it’s all tradeoffs

If the difference between moving something from one totalled van to a new one comes down to if you want to screw things in vs. permanently weld them... take the screw tradeoff.

A few issues with welding: One of the benefits of profile extrusion is the ability to work and rework it by just adding/removing/cutting pieces. Welding may interfere with this. Welding aluminum is also tough (though obviously not impossible). The heat also can lead to warping of the pieces, which probably isn't a big deal in van life, I was trying to use it as part of making good flat planes for a workbench.

1. Welding takes a lot longer than bolting two profiles together.

2. TIG welding is pretty difficult, so most people would have to hire a contractor to do it, making it very expensive.

3. It's hard to make welded stuff to high accuracy. If something doesn't fit, it takes a lot of time to fix it. With bolts it is trivial to fix bad alignment.

A very nice Ford Transit-based build based on Al extrusions from 3 years ago: "Retired engineer builds transforming, off-grid, stealth campervan"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5L6TZdy_y0

https://www.ortontransit.info/ full design w/full rationale !!!

I spent some time looking at extruded aluminum profiles a few months ago and the cheapest place I found was tnutz.com- I never ended up buying anything though, but their stuff looked good as far as I could tell.

The lengths some people will go to just to avoid learning to weld aluminum.

If you weld it, you can't easily change the shape of it later if you don't like it. There are reasons not to weld it even if you know how.

You take it apart with angle grinder.

For any one else wondering what this new material could be, they mean aluminium.

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