Is there such thing as an aluminum ak receiver?Could it be done?Just wondering.

Sure it can done, but the cost is going to kill you! Now if your just wanting to have it for a custom setup thats cool, but expensive, unless you can machine it yourself, but your not going to gain anything like better weight, or strength, a sheet metal receiver is about as good as its going to get for that.

While aluminum sheeting may be sturdy, I have serious doubts about it holding up to that kind of pounding, the steel ak receivers actually flex when the gun is fired and I don't know aluminum to have the same flex (springy) properties. I think the only way it would work is if it was milled out of a single piece of billet 7075 and even then it would need to be over built so the weight savings would be lost. On top of that there is then no guarantee that it will not fatigue and break.

you are corect. ( I work in the AL. ind. ) it can be made from AL. but would need to be a milled reciver that was over sized in the trunion for the steel bolt locking lugs. ther were FAL recivers made from AL. but they would fail at the locking sholder hole (headspacing). there are some AL. FAL's recivers that are 7.62x39 out there that are fine but a FAL is a diffrent beast.
muttman

Metals exibit Elastic and Plastic deformation. Steels have a large elastic region, e.g. steel has a lower slope (Young's Modulus) of the elastic region in a stress versus strain curve (stress being force/cross-sectional area and strain being change in length/initial length). The elastic region is the region where a material can be stretched and it will shrink back to it's original size. The Plastic region is where there is permanenet deformation. Aluminum has a very small elastic region which means that every time it stretches it is essentially a permanent change in length (Young's Modulus starts to approach infinity). As forces are imparted on a piece of aluminum, it will continue to stretch until failure. This is why aluminum aircraft will suddenly loose a section of the fuselage after so many years of operation (cyclic use causes failure). Aluminum has a very strong strength to weight ratio but would need to be much thicker than steel to be able to withstand the same forces without fracturing due to load cycles (fatigue). You could make it the same thickness as steel but it would have a much shorter life cycle. This is a very basic background.

Here is a link with some tensile testing background:

http://www.instron.us/wa/applications/test...on/default.aspx
Thanks for the tips.I may try the steel diamond plate.I was planning on a parkerized finish anyhow so the shiny alum. type would have had no use.
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One thing they don't add about the curves is that it seems the material will reach a maximum strength (Ultimate Tensile Strength - UTS) and then begin to loose strength. This is not the case. In reality the material has started to thin due to the ductile nature of metals and is essentially still increasing in stress versus strain. The stress is usually define as the force/cross-sectional area. As the cross-sectional area decreases the force can decrease and the strain can still go up. The stress in these curves isn't corrected for this thinning. It can be corrected by measuring the thickness of the sample following fracture and correcting the stress at the fracture point. If you graph this point on the stress versus strain curve you would actually see the stress continue to rise as the material is strained.

Also, temperature has a big impact on materials. Ductile materials at normal temps. will start to show brittle deformation at lower temps. The ductile transition temperature is dependant upon the material.

Considering that the Russians had to halt their initial AK production (and go back to making Mosin-Nagants) for a couple years because the receiver steel and tempering weren't right, I'd wager that an aluminum AK receiver would come apart pretty quick. The AK cycles very violently and aluminum doesn't do well when its on the receiving end of that abuse.

They did not make more Mosins, they made SKS rifles in the interim.