Aluminum Weight Calculator

Start with the metal that is actually there

A flat sheet is straightforward: multiply length by width by thickness, then multiply the volume by density. A hollow tube needs its empty centre removed first. Choosing a solid bar when the stock is hollow can make a useful shipping estimate wildly wrong.

“Weight” on this page means mass in kilograms or pounds. Use actual outside dimensions, especially for pipe. A nominal pipe size is a designation; entering that number as the outside diameter can give the wrong section area.

The Metric button uses millimetres for lengths; Imperial uses inches. Both show kg and lb results. Unit switching converts the dimensions already entered, so changing the display does not change the piece you are estimating. Enter fractional inches as decimals: ⅛ inch is 0.125.

A sheet example you can check by hand

Take a 2,000 × 1,000 × 3 mm sheet of 6061 aluminum. In centimetres, that is 200 × 100 × 0.3 cm, giving 6,000 cm³ of metal. At the nominal 6061 density of 2.70 g/cm³, the sheet has a mass of 16,200 g, or 16.2 kg. Twelve identical sheets total 194.4 kg.

The same sheet covers 2 m², so its area weight is 16.2 ÷ 2 = 8.1 kg/m². That is different from weight per metre: a metre of this 1,000 mm wide sheet also weighs 8.1 kg, but a narrower strip would have a lower linear weight while keeping the same kg/m².

For flat bar, strip, foil, block or rectangular busbar, use Sheet / plate and enter width and thickness. For coil with a known developed length, enter the unrolled strip length. The calculator does not infer strip length from coil outside diameter, core diameter or packing.

Tubes: subtract the bore, not the wall once

For a round tube with outside diameter D and wall thickness t, the inside diameter is D − 2t. The metal section is the outer circle minus the inner circle:

A 50 mm outside-diameter tube with a 3 mm wall has a 44 mm bore. The two circle areas differ by 141π mm², approximately 442.965 mm². At 2.70 g/cm³, one metre weighs approximately 1.196 kg; a two-metre length weighs 2.392 kg.

The wall must be less than half the outside diameter. A wall of 25 mm on a 50 mm diameter leaves no bore: choose Round bar for that solid cylinder. A rectangular hollow section likewise needs wall thickness less than half both outside dimensions.

For square tube, choose the box section and set width equal to height. The box estimate uses sharp corners; rounded real sections can have a different net metal area.

What changes when you choose 7075 instead of 6061?

The calculator uses nominal, room-temperature densities. These are estimates for the selected alloy, not measurements of your particular batch. The EAS Aluminium density table lists the values used here.

For the same 6,000 cm³ sheet, 7075 gives 16.86 kg, which is 0.66 kg heavier than the 6061 estimate. The calculator treats 6061-T6 as 6061 for nominal density; selecting T6 is not a strength or load-capacity calculation.

If a supplier specifies a different density, choose Custom density and enter it in g/cm³. That density unit stays the same in both measurement systems. A value of 2.70 g/cm³ is 2,700 kg/m³, so entering 2700 in the custom field would be a unit error.

Conversions use the NIST international inch definition of exactly 25.4 mm and the avoirdupois pound relationship of exactly 0.45359237 kg. The calculator converts the unrounded result; small differences from supplier tables may still arise from their density and dimension rounding.

When the simple section is not enough

Angles and channels are idealized as straight, uniform rectangles with their overlaps counted only once. Fillets, rounded corners, taper and manufacturing tolerances are excluded. These details matter most when the section is thin or the order contains many lengths.

For an extrusion with a supplier or CAD net section area, choose Custom section area. Enter cm² in Metric or in² in Imperial, plus length and density. Net area excludes every void; the outside bounding rectangle is not a substitute. An I-beam or an unusual profile can use this route without inventing missing dimensions.

Checker, chequered, diamond and tread plate include raised features that a plain thickness estimate does not describe. Use supplier section data or a listed mass per area instead of adding an arbitrary percentage. Honeycomb panels and siding assemblies may include voids, adhesives, coatings or other materials, so a solid aluminum slab of the same outside size is not a reliable model.

Use the estimate to compare stock and quantities. For a shipment, include packaging and confirm actual stock mass separately; the result here contains only the nominal metal geometry you entered.