Don’t Get Your Sheet or Strip in a Wad, Call Bud’s for Your Coil Equipment

Coil equipment is, if you think about it, a real misnomer. In a way when a person hears equipment expressed that way don’t you think they get the impression they are thinking a machine that rolls up a coil instead of the opposite? Shouldn’t this equipment be expressed as “uncoiling equipment”? After all, isn’t that what this machinery we are talking about does?

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking sheet or strip, you must have something to get the raw material described above into the production process. What is the typical raw material one might ask? Well, that material has two distinctly different characteristics, but at the end of the day both end up as finished product.

What Kind of Material Are We Talking About?

The first group of raw material is sheet steel. This definition is as broad as the Grand Canyon, (or at least its narrow part). Sheet steel, usually referred to as “sheet metal,” can vary in thickness for typically available product from very thin gauge up to and including one quarter inch in thickness. The size of the sheets can also vary widely, typically from 2' by 2' to 12' by 20', and everything in between. It comes in a nice variety of flavors as well. You can get low carbon steel, high carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminum, brass, galvanized sheet metal as well as many others.

What’s that old saying? “On the other hand, you have four fingers and a thumb?” This is the case with the second group of raw material that is received all rolled up in a steel coil. Yep, they call it strip steel, and while you can order just about any width you prefer, there are many standard widths available off the shelf at your local steel supply house. The material in this group has typically already been put through a slitter or slitting machine prior to its arrival at the consumer’s site. Raw material in this industry is usually sold by the pound, be it low carbon coil, or stainless-steel coil, it is all the same — all the buyer has to do is compute the required weight of the material to make sure he or she orders enough to complete the job.

How Much More Can Coil Equipment Do?

For HVAC and duct work fabricators, or anyone else working with sheet metal, our company has partnered with a line of coil processing equipment manufactured in the U.S.A. that was developed by an industry-recognized manufacturer. This coil equipment was designed to produce dependable performance at affordable pricing. We offer machines for ultra-high-speed slitting, coiling (just the un-coiler) and forming sheet metal. Basically, what has happened is that all major coil machinery manufactures decided over some period of time that they would transform the old uncoiler into something more, much more.

Now any shop that has even a small desire to run parts from strip steel has so many different options available to them. The lowly coil/uncoiler has suddenly blossomed into a device that not only feeds out a roll of strip steel, but can make that strip into anything you want. From a simple duct making machine… Wait a minute! What’s simple about duct making machines? Ever see one? They range from a compact forming extruding machine that fits into the back of a van to make house gutters in a homeowner’s driveway, to huge production machines running as many as 10 rolls at once. The bigger duct rolling machines can do residential as well as commercial duct work. In one machine, the duct is formed on all sides and is closed with a popular industrial standard seal such as the Pittsburg “snap-lock” duct seal. These machines can even accomplish “L” shapes and “U” shapes. (And that’s just uncoiler to duct making machines, we haven’t even brought up “uncoiler/slitters.”)

What if You Had to Slit? A LOT?

We haven’t even spoken about slitters yet. Slitting machines make up about a half of the coiler/uncoilers applications out in the field. Frequently, it makes sense for a company to buy wider steel strip than what they need to make their parts, and then slit the strip into multiple widths of a size that can be used. Of course, slitting can be done with multiple knives to make virtually as many strips at a time as your machine capacity will permit. On many occasions, now that your coiler/uncoiler is a slitting machine too, it’s not hard to conceive of the strips coming out of the slitter and then end up going into another machine like a stamping press.

We describe this category as “coil equipment” because there are a lot of machines that have a place in this group. If the uncoiler is just an uncoiler without added capabilities, then that’s the place you hang you coil and she’ll feed out to the next machine. The next piece of equipment in the line might be a planer or a flattener or perhaps right into some type of forming machine and out the other end comes finished product ready to be sold or used.

Call or email us today to find out how Bud's Machine Tools can help you increase your strip steel tubes or ducts output — we have a knowledgeable sales/service staff sure to be able to assist in any concept you would like to pursue.

Previously sold within Coil Equipment