Picking the right steel fabricator is a big decision for any manufacturing process; the quality of steel you choose will affect how much material you actually need for your products. Here are some questions to ask yourself to make sure you're choosing a high quality steel fabricator.
What Types of Steel Do They Offer?
One thing that you should ask is the types of steel you need. There are a variety of finished products for different uses. For instance, high-carbon steel options are great for added strength. Spring steel is important if you need a bit of give in your product, such as when it may be subject to some impact. And weathering steel is important if your steel will live mostly outdoors. Armed with this information, you can weed out some fabricators right away if they can't deliver.
Can They Deliver My Format?
You should also look at the types of steel you need in your final product and make sure that they have high quality tools for delivering these products. Some companies specialize in sheet metal fabrication, but do you also need the material to be cut or folded? There are variety of tools for getting these tasks accomplished; for example, steel cutting can be done with lasers, water jets, or torches.
What is the Strength of the Steel?
Another thing to consider is the strength of the steel that you're buying. The factors above can affect the tensile strength of the steel greatly; for instance, bending the steel may weaken it, and processes that involve high heat may help to consolidate the steel's strength by evening out pressure points. While you won't be able to test the strength of each individual piece, you can guess. Hopefully, your steel fabricator will be able to give you the tensile strength of a wide range of their steel product types, tested on multiple occasions. With this data, they may be able to help you estimate the tensile strength that you can expect for your finished products.
Choosing the right steel fabricator may be a process. You have to take a leap of faith at first if you've never ordered from a fabricator before, and it can help to start out with a small order. This way, you can test the quality first hand to make sure you're getting what you need. But when you need to make that educated initial guess at steel quality, these three questions can help you narrow down the best high quality steel fabricator to manufacture your products. Click here for more information on sheet metal fabrication.
Share6 June 2016
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