- It is possible,
even though it's rare,
that painted and acrylic coated steel
can have defects straight from the supplier.
So in this video,
we'll talk about what defects are possible
and how to identify those.
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What's up guys,
welcome to The Metal Roofing Channel.
Welcome to Q and A Mondays.
I'm Thad Barnett, subscribe if you're new.
We release metal roofing and metal construction content
every Monday and Wednesday.
Today, we are talking about defects that can happen,
with painted or acrylic coated steel,
metal roofing materials.
What can happen from the steel mill, and on,
and what happens during the process
to make sure those defects are minimized,
or removed completely
before it actually gets to a roll former,
before it gets to a metal roofer, before it gets to a home.
So I have Jeff Hock and Adam Mazzella,
from Sheffield Metals with me today.
Thanks for being here guys.
Let's go ahead and start with the process that steel takes
to get from a steel mill into someone's house.
And then we'll kind of talk about the defects,
and what that looks like along the way.
- [Adam] So Thad typically,
when you hear the word flat rolled product,
that's typical of the steel that we're sourcing.
The steel that we're getting is usually
a cold rolled substrate.
And then it goes through a coating process,
and it's coated with Galvalume.
So we're usually AZ 50 coating,
and that's just the top and bottom
combined thickness of coating,
on the steel for painted product.
And then the unpainted product is an AZ 55.
So they go a little bit thicker on the unpainted,
just because it's going to be exposed.
From there,
The steel goes to the paint lines,
if it's intended to be painted,
or if it's a Galvalume product,
it would go to one of our branches.
All of the steel we receive is typically pretension level.
So it's getting a lot of the quote unquote shape
out of the product prior to even coming to us.
And from there, there is some quality inspections
and processes that they go through before.
Oftentimes we even see it.
So if there's shape issues or gaps in the coating,
or pinholes or even damage to substrate,
the ideas that they're going to catch it before
it even really gets paint on it,
or before it's processed by us,
and ultimately out the door
to even see one of our customers.
- Tell me more about that tension leveling.
And tell me about the memory of metal.
- So all metal has a memory,
and it's, as steel is made,
it's made in a process that it's subjected
to very high heat. And when it cools,
that's essentially where it cools
and you can see a grain in the metal,
and then as it's either rolled further
or rolled into coil form,
that coil wants to conform to that metal memory.
So, that's typical of what you see in like coil set,
or if it wasn't totally flat,
you could have things beyond coil set,
such as edge wave.
You can have center buckle.
Those are really the typical things that we're seeing
in our world,
is that that coil set, edge wave, center buckle,
you know, there are other issues
kind of alluded to like crossbow and torsion,
not terribly typical.
You know, you can see these things,
but usually the tension leveling process
will eliminate most of these shape issues.
And all the tension leveling;
I don't want to say all it is,
but tension leveling essentially is subjecting the steel to,
immense pressure to essentially take this shape
and straighten it or flatten it.
And if you were to,
take a piece of steel
before it's tension leveled
and cut it out
and then take a piece of that steel,
10 feet later
and cut that out after it was tension leveled,
most often you'd see that there is less shape
than the items that were tension leveled.
- As you said,
a lot of the defects that you might see in our world
is that shape issue.
- Yeah. So, and that shape issue,
can cause issues downstream when slitting,
for us, or even further downstream
when our customers are going to fabricate a trim piece.
So let's say they put a sheet in a shear and they wanna
get a nice long 10 foot piece and shear it.
That could have shape issues and caused them issues,
and ultimately not end up
with the best looking finished product.
So similarly with rolling panels,
that shape that memory in that metal,
if it's not taken out
or if it's not able to be taken out
and you're putting that,
you're subjecting it to additional pressures,
forming a piece of trim, forming a panel,
it's still going to want to try to keep that shape.
So it might show up in the form of oil canning.
It might show up in the form of the panel trying to twist
as it's being rolled formed,
it could run uphill, downhill, left, right.
Oftentimes your machine can help
accommodate some of these shape issues.
But ideally, you know, a good check,
is to check the shape of the metal
prior to going into the roll form,
if you are noticing some shape issues.
And I know Jeff has a lot of experience on kind of
how to adjust and adapt to shape issues
in metal prior to being role formed.
- So, Adam, as you said, you know,
even after the metal is produced,
somebody with a portable roll former,
does have some control
over the finished panels and what they look like.
One of the main things that there is, is there's,
what's called a Camber adjuster
where if the panel running uphill or downhill,
or like a ski slope,
they have the ability within their machine
to adjust the roller set,
and basically flatten a panel out
that might be sloping in one of those directions.
It might be caused because of a machine
that needs to be adjusted,
or it could be caused,
like you were talking about having inconsistencies
in the material itself.
There are things you can do to check it,
whether it's your machine or whether it's the material,
before the materials run through it.
But that is one of the;
another good benefit about portable rollers
and the flexibility they have,
They give you,
when it comes to manufacturing their own panels.
- Jeff, can you clarify a little bit more
about once the steel comes from a steel mill
goes into a coating line to be painted,
and then comes into a Sheffield Metals facility.
Tell me a little bit more about the process
that Sheffield goes through
when they receive that material
and then gets it out to their customers.
- We received master coils from the steel mill
or the steel mill provides
the paint line with master coils,
And then we received the painted
master coils from the paint line.
But once we received them,
we have stock coils,
stock standard sizes
that we have on,
and it's usually 20 to 24 inches.
So we slipped those down for either,
a 48 inch master coil
or a 40 inch master coil
to get the stock 20, 24 inch sizes.
We could also slip down to custom sizes.
Again, that's going to be based on
the panel profile that you're running,
and the finished panel width that you want,
it's gonna be based on the stretch out.
So, we'll actually take those master coils
and we'll slit them down to the proper size
to be able to get them to the manufacturer,
to be able to run the panel
that they're trying to produce.
Whether it be a 12 inch wide panel
coming out of a 16 inch wide coil,
or a 16 inch wide panel,
coming out of a 22 inch wide coil.
But standard coil widths are always going to be
your best option as far as,
being more economical,
because you're reducing waste.
And those are going to be your 20 and 24 inch coils.
- Adam when Sheffield receives material
to cut those master coils down,
there are thousands and thousands of pounds
into smaller coils for
roll formers, and fabricators, and contractors.
Does Sheffield have some quality control procedures
to make sure the material
is good and free of defects before it gets slit down
and then sent to a customer?
- [Adam] Yeah.
And that ultimately, you have kind of your pre-inspection.
Something that comes off the truck,
we're visually inspecting it,
looking for damage to the packaging.
A lot of things come in in a package.
And so, we leave the packaging on
typically to protect it when it's in inventory.
However, there is a visual QC process,
and you might see dents and damage,
and ultimately you want to work through all of that,
those potential issues,
to make sure it's not going to end up going to a customer.
So, that's pretty typical,
and then to understand,
and really be able to see shape issues,
or issues of defects inherent in the substrate.
You really got to get the metal
up on the slitter to be able to see it.
What I mean by that is,
we have our typical facility lighting,
but over top all of our slitters,
we have a really bright lights that we can see
and see the light bouncing off of the metal
as it's going through either the slitter or the pit,
or being recoiled to look for shape issues.
And we usually have two people on the slitter,
two or three at any given time,
to really keep an eye on that and look for those things.
Sometimes things slip through,
and I'd say it's on limited occasion,
but oftentimes we stop.
If we do see an issue, we try to cut samples out.
We measure how big of an issue it really is.
And when I talked about I Units previously,
make sure that it's within industry tolerance for I Units
and make a determination if the customer can use it or not.
Sometimes it could be operations reaching out to sales
and sales reaching out to the customer
and trying to understand.
Hey, there's potential for an issue
it's within tolerance,
but are you planning on putting structure in this panel?
You know, stiffening ribs, stiffening beads, striations.
So typically we love seeing structure in the panel,
so that could create some dialogue
between sales and the customer.
As far as, you know, the intended place of this panel,
what are they going to do?
Are they going to put structure,
stiffening, beads, striations,
things of that nature.
Sometimes they might say, hey, it's a flat panel.
I really need this to look like glass.
And, we might have to choose a different coil,
or if it's out of tolerance,
we might have to push back on the steel mill
and say, hey, you know, this coil is out of tolerance
and ultimately rejected
on our end prior to even going to a customer.
- So towards the end of this process,
when someone is running a coil through their roll former,
and they notice an issue,
what should they do?
- Probably the most important thing you could do is
if you've noticed an issue
while you're running your roll formers
is to stop running your roll former.
We usually recommend and say,
we'll give you 300 feet
for the problem to work itself out.
After that 300 feet,
it's kind of hard to compensate
for the problem, if the whole coil has been (mumble) out
or the whole job has been run out.
So again, this goes into the importance of
the roll forming operator,
to really pay attention to what's going on
and QA that products that are coming out.
If you think you have a problem
during the roll forming process,
and you're noticing issues,
and you're below that 300 feet,
you can still call us
and say, how should I proceed?
I think there might be an issue with this coil.
But the best thing an operator could do
is to stop, let us know what's going on.
So the main thing is that you didn't use,
you do stop.
You don't have a whole bunch of panels,
lay it on the ground,
or stacked up that we can't accommodate.
Then we try to catch the problem as early as possible.
- On top of that, I mean,
if there is an issue you might be asked
to replicate that issue,
and if you run the entire coil out,
it's going to be awfully difficult to replicate that issue.
And in turn, have somebody be able to compensate
or issue a credit if there truly is bad coil.
Additionally, if you don't stop,
you run the whole thing out.
We don't know if it was a roll former issue.
We don't know if it was a coil issue in many cases.
So just kinda second all of that, just stop,
and seek some guidance.
That's really what we're here for,
is to work through challenges,
work through issues,
and get things perfect
for your install moving forward.
- Thanks guys, for talking me through
the defects that can occur in painted
and acrylic coated steel for your metal roof.
Remember comment down below,
if you have any question.
Subscribe here to The Metal Roofing Channel
and as always,
Thad Barnett and we'll catch you next time.
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