I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I am looking to purchase some aluminum extrusions for my frame and I wanted to find the best supplier. For reference, I am located in the U.S. (California) and so far I am considering the following stores:

Misumi
Mcmaster
Folger Tech
E3D Online

I'm leaning towards E3D because it allows me to buy pieces in custom lengths and it is fairly low cost. E3D is primarily known for their hotends, I believe, so I am a bit skeptical of the quality of their aluminum extrusions. Has anyone purchased from them or know of any other good suppliers?

Check your local scrap yards for 8020- it's used in a lot of industrial machines and frequently can be bought for pennies on the dollar. You can afford to get the much stronger/stiffer 1.5" square stuff instead of paying a higher price for lighter/floppier 20mm stuff.

Misumi will cut, drill, tap and machine to virtually any requirement can can automatically generate full CAD of every alteration.

They are also ridiculously fast, accurate and cheap. Their extrusion looks to be roughly 60% cheaper than E3D. I use misumi frequently.

Isn't E3D also out of England? That could be some hefty shipping fees.

E3D only had shipping fees of about 10 GBP for an order with enough aluminum extrusion pieces for a Prusa i3 frame.

But I will definitely look more into Misumi, especially if they are that much cheaper than E3D.

Thanks!

Take a look at Palleti. Very wide range of shapes, will custom cut as well.

Misumi! I love Misumi!

I always order aluminum extrusions and lots of other stuff from Misumi. They have the best prices and their machining services are very high quality, also in the last year or so they've been working very diligently to make the website more user-friendly. It's still not completely on the user-friendly side currently, but compared to the old version of the site, which was like a total nightmare trying to order something, it's not too bad now! HAHA!

May pay to checkout Openbeam extrusions.

[www.openbeamusa.com]

Sorry for the self promotion but I have some extrusion on my site as well. Currently I am out of stock of 20X20.

WWW.ZATOPA.COM

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