While a guard at a GM plant I got to watch the Caustic Soda tank strip
off the paint and clean the steel for a re-paint.

The tank was heated and had a safety gravity dump to an outside tank.

The steel with paint shot sparks out of the tank and worked greatly.

Martin

On 2/2/2011 1:52 PM, wrote:
On Feb 2, 1:26 am, wrote:
On Feb 1, 9:02 pm, Stuart wrote:





On 2/1/2011 9:41 PM, Bob AZ wrote:

If you have a quick and effective technique, or a good source for a
machine or a steel supplier (midwest USA) Cincinnati area. Please tell
me about it.

Thanks,

Stuart

Stuart

FWIW

Are you able to buy what you need in larger quantities to make it more
attractive to suppliers? This could lead to a lower or a more
stabilized price.

What lengths do you buy your steel in now?

I am not qualifed to input anything useful about bringing up what is
available to your needs.

Take care
Bob AZ

Bob AZ

Bob,

We buy thousands of feet a month, we are on good terms and definitely a
volume buyer. In the last 10 days we got 200 24 foot sticks of 1x1
alone. The problem is that the stuff we liked has gone away during the
recession. I hope somebody buys the patent, or the machines, or
re-starts the line, but right now we can't get it. As far as our
distributor can tell, it isn't being made, so we are stuck right now
dealing with this. Price isn't an issue, we just cannot find it.

We had been buying the Kleen Kote for about 10 years, and our volume has
gone up massively during that time. We used to be able to just run a
solvent rag over the steel to get it clean of mill oil, and we still did
that with the odd sizes that we couldn't get pre-primed, but we are now
looking at huge time and solvent costs.

Everything has to be clean, and has to be painted, the final product
cannot be sent out as raw steel.

Stuart- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

In relation to the industry, your needs are small.

It is likely why the supply dried up...low demand on a high cost item
for the supplier.

Are you sure that huge time/solvet costs are that bad?

The amount you describe doesn't sound like a lot of steel...hire some
minimum wage folks to wipe it down.

TMT- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

We used to run that much stuff through in a half a day for motorhome
trim. I don't know of any pipe washers that you can buy, our stuff
was part of a paint line, load up hanging racks on a conveyor and it
ran it through a washer about the size of a semi-trailer, through a
drying furnace, ditto, through a paint booth and then through a
horseshoe path in the curing furnace for the cure and cool down.
Unload and repeat, constantly. All home-made and custom-designed.

The problem with solvents is that they're prohibited in some places,
VOC's, ya'know, and some people just can't stand working with them.
Had that problem at the motorhome plant when we had to start wiping
down the pieces with solvent to get rid of oil they used for bending
while the washer was down. You never heard so much complaining in
your life! Go with water-based stuff and you start picking up rust on
steel parts. No good under paint.

Stan