Metal Weight Calculator

Metal is sold and shipped by weight, and your bench, your rack and your back all care how heavy a length of stock is before you pick it up. This works out the weight of a bar, tube, sheet or plate from the shape, the size and the material, in pounds or kilograms, and weighs a whole batch at once.

Shape sets the cross-section, material sets the heft

Every one of these is the same idea: find the area of the cut end, multiply by the length to get the volume, then multiply by the density of the metal. A round bar uses the circle area, a hex uses the across-flats measure, a tube subtracts the hollow middle. The only thing the material changes is density, which is why a lead bar and an aluminum bar of the same size are worlds apart on the scale.

Measure the way the stock is called out

Round bar is measured across the diameter, square and flat bar by their sides, hex bar across the flats, not point to point. Tube wants the outside diameter and the wall thickness, and the page hollows it out for you. Sheet and plate are width, length and thickness. Enter the real measured sizes and the weight comes out right; guess the wall on a tube and it will be off, because the hollow is most of the saving.

Alloy and grade move the number a little

The densities here are the standard values for each metal family: mild steel at 7.85, aluminum 6061 at 2.70, stainless 304 at 8.0 grams per cubic centimeter. A different grade, a temper or a coating shifts the real weight by a fraction of a percent, which never matters for a cut list or a shipping estimate and only matters for precision work. If you need a specific alloy's figure, swap the density in your head and the ratio holds.

Why the batch count is there

Stock comes in sticks and sheets, and you usually want the weight of the pile, not one piece. Enter how many identical pieces and the total updates, so you can size a shipment, check a shelf rating or price a lot by weight. The each-piece figure stays on view too, for when you need just the one. Both pounds and kilograms show at once, because yards and mills do not always agree on which to use.

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