The procedures carried out for the transformation of an existing Drop Weight Test machine into an apparatus for frontal crash analysis on section bars is described. After a brief discussion on the experimental set-up, we perform both a mechanical strength verification of the components, stressed during impact, and a dynamic characterization of the machine. The analysis and correlation of the three acquisition channels of the measure set-up (photoelectric cell, accelerometer and axial load cell) is then faced, in order to obtain either reliable measures either a critical overview of the phenomena involved during the impact. Besides the experimental results, obtained on simple aluminum extruded columns, some finite element models based on the explicit integration method are developed to emulate the post buckling behaviour. The good correlation between the numerical and experimental results, in terms of global parameters, gives the opportunity to gain further information on the phenomena involved.