Well its kinda an older post, but no one answered ... so let me take a stab at it. The answer is yes and no :). This may be a longer post .. cos there are a lot of bases to be covered. Can you use the same equipment ... yes, but if you are trying to move between silver and al .... no. You really don't want to get any al in on or around your silver - especially soldering (more on that later) ... al just clogs up files .... quick. Its sticky. If you have been doing silver ... clean out your sweeps drawer before you do al ... or you'll ruin your sweeps if you care about that. IU mostly don't care ... my sweeps have silver, gold, steel (saw blades), copper, titanium .... no al :). I think ... you mostly have to give sweeps away ... LOL. There are a few places that will take them for charity. I have ... used a magnet to get the blades out ... and panned them out and melted them in a big gob .... but then you have no idea what you have. I used to try to keep sterling separate so I could melt it down and make wire ... but then I started switching between argentium and standard sterling ... and again, you don't know what you have. I do try to keep gold scrap separate so I can make wire or sheet out of it ... so the short answer is if you are going to totally switch to al and not between silver and al ... clean everything up really good and have at it. Only ... I'm not sure you are going to have much luck with al unless you are wire wrapping. You can't really solder it with a torch ... industrially I think they use TIG. You could use mechanical connections like rivets .... I'm not sure its going to work like you want it to. If you are trying to save some coin ... take a look at nickel silver. I hate the way it works ... but it can be soldered with silver solders. Just ... my 2 cents.