The marketplace page for the newer top covers say they use 6063 aluminum, but I don’t see anything on the older top covers and couldn’t find anything elsewhere either. Mine shipped specifically in batch 6 if that makes a difference.
As far as I know the only difference was the new hinges, I didn’t think there was any change from old to new for materials. But I could be wrong. I have the O.G. (11th Gen i7) laptop from like batch 2 and still rocking the O.G. hinges etc. without issue (I guess I got lucky).
The “new” top cover is specifically marked as CNC’d from a block of 6063. Not sure there was ever an announcement for the makeup for the “original” cover bedsides being 50% recycled. No Hinges included.
The change is supposed to make it stiffer over all.
Yes, my impression from what I found was that the 6063 was a change. I couldn’t find any specific information about what they used for the earlier tops and are maybe still using for the other parts. But I thought somebody might know.
I haven’t had any issues with my top cover. If I wish the bottom cover was a bit more rigid, sometimes holding the laptop in one hand interferes with the touchpad.
Mostly I asked out of curiosity, wondering what I could use on it without scratching it. My specific use case is that I want to cut some of the stickers on it. Looking it up, it seems like aluminum alloys vary quite a lot in hardness. If I can’t find any solid information tho I’ll just test some stuff on my extra expansion card. Hopefully that’s the same material.
Anodizing type / thickness should make more difference for surface scratch resistance. Unfortunately, I don’t think Framework would be using thick type III hard anodizing because it’s more difficult, should have a higher energy / carbon cost. And Framework mentioned making choices with their anodizing to reduce environmental impact.
I would assume you’re going to scratch it unless you’re using plastic, the anno isn’t super hard on my AMD lid, and I can’t imagine they made it worse when doing a CNC cover.