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303 Controlling Incoming Material

Don't Mix Material Lots: A material lot is composed of product formed in one continuous production run. To make tubing, a wide coil of steel is slit into the proper widths, recoiled, and the daughter coils are fed into a tube mill. The thickness of the daughter coils will vary some - thicker from the center of the parent coil, thinner from the edges. The physical and chemical properties of the daughter coils will be very similar. Lot numbers change at the end of a shift, and at the end of a parent coil. Commercial tolerances are broad enough so that there will be differences in the way different lots of material behave during bending.

Mixed material lots will mingle tubes with different hardnesses and yield points - which will put your operator in a very frustrating position. Every next tube will springback differently than the last. If the differences are small enough a compromise can be reached, but it is much less expensive to simply keep different lots separate from each other.

Repeatability within the same lot can be difficult when forming gradual (or large radius) bends. The effects of springback and radial growth are magnified because the bending process is so much more gentle compared to tight radius bending. In the office furniture business, arm rests with gradual curves are a particular problem. Several companies have switched to Aluminum Killed (AK) or Aluminum Killed Drawing Quality (AKDQ) materials and not only met the increased cost of the material with scrap reductions, but realized lower over all production costs as a result. It often pays big dividends for production to work with purchasing and engineering to help find cost savings from scrap reduction by the use of better quality materials.

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