In the field of cold-rolled steel strips, it's like making friends - it's inherently customized. Often, people's temperaments and production methods vary, requiring fine-tuning, even involving a process of trial and error through science and practice, with actions and reactions.
About half a year ago, we came into contact with a user who needed 65Mn cold-rolled steel strips for making springs. After initial discussions, their requirement was for the hardness to meet a certain level and for good toughness. Specifically, after heat treatment, when using a pair of pliers to bend the spring, out of a hundred pieces, only around five could break for it to be considered qualified. Actually, this requirement wasn't very strict. During the process of providing 65Mn cold-rolled steel strip samples, we faced two additional limitations. The first one was that the customer's 65Mn cold-rolled steel strips had to undergo heat treatment at a very cheap oil quenching facility. As the added value of this product is not very high, they had to use an inexpensive heat treatment plant. Normally, the unit price for oil quenching 65Mn cold-rolled steel strips elsewhere is around 2.5 RMB, but the unit price at this facility was only around 1.5 RMB
Another thing is that the unit price for the customer's 65Mn cold-rolled steel strip is heavily compressed because they require a large quantity. They consume approximately 2 tons of 65Mn cold-rolled steel strip per day, which amounts to about 60 tons per month. Therefore, we really want to secure this customer as well, especially now that we have entered a fiercely competitive stage, where small profits and high sales are the foundation of operations.
These two constraints put considerable pressure on us. We need to be cost-effective while ensuring sufficient allowance for heat treatment. After all, providing heat treatment at such a low price might be impacted by factors like the oil change cycle and machine temperature control.
Baoshan District,
Shanghai, China.
