Secondary Steels and Metals
America’s steel industry produces a vast tonnage of secondary steel. Some of this steel is off gauge or slightly off chemistry. Secondary steel can be purchased at a low price and can be cold rolled to compete with very expensive steels. Surface defect, such as coil breaks can be removed by cold rolling.
When a cold rolling mill reduces the thickness of any material, whether it is plastic or metal, the material elongates in proportion to the reduction in thickness. In other words, if the thickness is reduced by 10%, the material will grow 10% in elongation. In turn, this means the parts or product manufacturer can expect a 10% higher yield for the same amount of material before it is reduced. Ten percent more product or parts from the same material means 10% more profit.
This can be significant because, as an example, some prime hot rolled pickled and oiled steels can have a thickness tolerance of ± .004”. This means if you are purchasing steel by weight, you will probably obtain the material at the maximum thickness instead of the minimum thickness tolerance and you will produce 10% less parts or product than you would if the mill were able to hold very close minimum tolerances. This is one of the reasons why higher quality steel products obtained from some rolling mills have made great inroads into the metal working industry.
Cold rolled stainless and other expensive alloys can have a quick payback. This is because there is a wide difference between the cost of the raw material and the finished precision cold rolled product.
American Steel Products Company has developed many cold rolling mills that can be placed in any coil processing line. These cold rolling mills assure an exact gauge, generally with tolerances of ± .0005” in thickness, thereby reducing and elongating the material. The strip camber can be removed and edging rolls can be placed in front of the cold rolling mill to produce burr free edges or any kind of rounded edge that may be required. Also, by cold rolling, the material can be increased in yield strength and tensile strength for structural purposes such as racks and building products.
