Clean Steel, No Oil – Fabricators Love the SCS Steel Surface

Jan. 3, 2010 - PRLog -- Hawkeye Industries, a well-respected sheet metal fabrication firm in the Southeast was on the hunt for a sheet steel capable of providing a better paint finish for the custom fabricated steel parts this Tupelo, Mississippi firm produces. The odd thing is Hawkeye doesn't paint the parts it makes - it sends them out for painting, plating or other finish. Even so, the parts Hawkeye provides for its customers must meet its high standards so Hawkins got involved with his contract painter, exploring ways to achieve a more consistent premium surface without the costs of an expanded pre-paint regimen or, in the worst case, rework.

Hawkeye engaged their steel suppliers in the effort, motivating them to find a flat rolled sheet steel with surface finish or treatment that might help. One supplier brought in sample sheets of a completely new hot rolled product that had just come to the scene. Its trade name was SCS, for Smooth Clean Surface - a process that brushes the surface of ordinary hot band, leaving it remarkably clean and rust resistant without any coating or protective oil film. See http://www.scsprocess.com

Hawkeye's painting subcontractor ran trials on different parts made from sheets of SCS and obtained top-notch results - consistent, cosmetically superior finish with good adhesion. With more trials, the painter even found they could use a truncated wash cycle since there was no oil to be removed from SCS.

Mission accomplished. Hawkins was satisfied and asked his steel buyer to start replacing some HRPO purchases with SCS. He didn't give this new 'clean steel' much more thought until one of his laser operators said, "Bryan, come out to the shop. You've got to see this."

Hawkins walked out to his new laser cell to see it finishing up a tightly nested collection of parts Hawkeye ran frequently. The laser was cutting an SCS steel sheet which replaced the HRPO used in the past. The sheet had run nearly 20% faster than their standard for that job.

A fluke? Not at Hawkeye Industries, a company on the leading edge of laser technology. Hawkins is a recognized experts on laser technology and efficiency.

They put that expertise to work, trying different laser settings to optimize them for cutting SCS. Hawkins recalls. "New lasers like ours are fast to start with, but SCS sheets give us another 15% to 25% speed advantage over HRPO sheets. That's like cutting five sheets in the time it used to take us to cut four."

Sheet metal fabricators became interested in SCS primarily to inhibit rusting with no need for protective oil. That not only gives SCS-treated steel a longer 'shelf life', it also reduces the need to clean the steel before painting. SCS savings is what attracted manufacturers to SCS.

As the number of SCS users grew, anecdotes about unexpected property of SCS began circulating in the industry: SCS-brushed steel sheets or plate laser and plasma cut faster than hot roll black or HRPO sheets of the same thickness and chemistry the same findings Hawkeye Industries had validated.

The TMW team was referred to Precision Laser Manufacturing (PLM) of East Peoria, Illinois. PLM is a contract laser processing company offering laser cutting, welding, engraving and heat treating to the con-ag equipment, automotive, medical, food processing and defense industries. Todd Berry, owner of PLM explains, "Laser work is all we do, so we pride ourselves on being especially efficient and able to 'tune' our lasers for different materials. When we were asked by TMW if we could run some side-by-side comparisons of lasering SCS, HRPO and untreated hot roll, I was fascinated because they were all the same thickness and comparable chemistries. The only difference was the surface preparation."

PLM's laser operator made a few benchmark cuts then started to tune their laser for the different materials. Berry reconted, "We alternately varied power, nozzle diameter, focal length and assist gas pressure while slowly increasing travel speed of the laser head. When we got to where the cut quality started to deteriorate, we'd make some adjustments to bring quality back in line, then increase speed some more. It was an iterative process, but we honed in on what seemed to be an optimum set of parameters."

The result? "The SCS steel surface definitely cuts faster, especially at the thinner gauges. That's completely logical, because what's distinctive about the SCS material is its surface. In thinner sheets, that surface effect is magnified relative to thick sheets."

Another sheet metal fabricator searching for a solution to steel surface quality problems decided to try SCS. The difference in this case was the material was in the form of tubular steel, not flat sheets.

Industrial Laser Solutions (ILS), of Tie Down Engineering of Atlanta, Georgia operates three advanced laser tube cutting cells, but sometimes ran into problems with rust on the hot roll black and HRPO welded tubular steel they purchased. Those rusted tubes had to be sent out for cleaning - a process that added cost and also added cycle time. ILS did not want to be in the secondary steel recovery business any longer.

Nancy Shadrix, the steel buyer for Tie Down Engineering, proposed trialing SCS-treated hot roll tubular steel. The trial was a success and ILS converted over its tubular steel orders to SCS. This not only eliminated the rust problem, but allowed ILS to consolidate the separate hot rolled black and HRPO purchases into a single SCS purchase. See http://www.scsprocess.com/advantages/scs-steel-purchasing...

Chuck MacKarvich, founder and President of Tie Down Engineering, next wanted to replace all his hot rolled sheet steel with SCS steel for the price savings. But he needed to be certain it would present no issues in other areas, as Tie Down /ILS also performs stamping, bending, welding, and turret punching in addition to lasering. Sloan MacKarvich, Chuck's son marshaled SCS material through those fabrication processes and was pleased to see SCS sheets perform well across the board. See more SCS product quality information at http://www.scsprocess.com/advantages/scs-steel-product-qu...

"We run four Mitsubishi ML 3015 SV flat bed lasers and, yes, we saw speed increases with the SCS-treated material. We also get a more precise cut, even at very tight tolerances with the SCS steel sheets."

MacKarvich adds, "With the cleanliness of the SCS surface finish we found our weld quality improved and our welding cells became more productive. In addition, our paint finish looks better on the SCS parts, so next we want to see if we can lean out our paint prep, as I've been told we should be able to."

Concludes MacKarvich. "Too often when you make a material change to try to fix a problem in one area, it creates a different problem in another area. This time, trying to solve a surface quality problem, we not only solved the original problem, but discovered advantages in other steel fabrication areas that we had not anticipated. It's like reaching down to pick up a crumpled dollar bill and finding a five dollar bill folded inside it - a nice little bonus for your efforts."

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SCS Steel Suppliers provide the surface treatment, SCS for Smooth Clean Surface. SCS removes rust/mill scale leaving a high quality steel surface finish, smooth as stainless or cold roll. SCS steel is ideal for sheet metal fabrication and resists rusting.