How metal fabricators can keep customers happy, verify the material

Different alloys of stainless steel can look similar, but that doesn't mean they are interchangeable. Before a job starts, a metal fabricator might want to check the material to ensure it matches up with the customer-specified alloy. A mobile metal analyzer can help with this task. AlexandruRosu/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Customer satisfaction is of the utmost importance for a metal fabricator. If the customer is happy, the shop can expect more orders coming its way.

But when things go wrong, it causes more than frustration. Mistakes are costly.

Imagine a scenario where an important job comes in, and material is ordered. The material arrives, the job is scheduled, and five days later the parts are ready for delivery to the customer. But when the customer receives the parts and does a check on the metal, it finds the alloy it specified in the original order is not what the parts are made of.

Of course, the main concern is that the customer is upset and, perhaps, has to halt its own production schedule. But the metal fabricator also has to drop everything to pick up the out-of-spec parts, order the correct material, and interrupt current production schedules to accommodate this hot order for the upset customer (not to mention the parts that likely have to be scrapped!). That’s a lot of time and money spent trying to make the order right, but that’s reality when quality is assumed and not verified.

Fortunately, fab shops don’t have to have elaborate quality control departments to avoid this kind of disruption.

Spectro Ametek is offering a webcast on March 30 (1 p.m. CT/2 p.m. ER) that will explain how to take the guessing game out of material identification. Two Spectro experts, Lars Jenster, a product support specialist, and Kyle Rauen, a materials scientist, will discuss the company’s mobile metal analyzers, which provide a complete elemental composition of material. They can be used both for metal entering the shop and completed parts and components leaving the shipping dock—keeping surprises to a minimum.

If you’d like to learn more about this important quality tool, register for the webcast here.