etals supply continued to be at a choke point during February, according to the latest U.S. Census report on durable goods manufacturers’ shipments, inventories and orders. Unfilled orders for primary metal producers totaled $35.9 billion in February (not seasonally adjusted), up 4 percent from January and rising 11.1 percent from $32.3 billion in February 2020.

Unfilled orders at metal fabricators neared $80.2 billion (not seasonally adjusted), increasing 2.6 percent from January and jumping 8.7 percent from almost $73.8 billion in February 2020.

A March 24 Morgan Stanley Research report stated that commodity prices were at a sweet spot. “In our commodities team’s view, market drivers have been almost universally positive through first quarter 2021, supported primarily by a consumer and manufacturing-led global recovery, speculative inflows, limited supply growth and disrupted shipping.” It doesn’t help when a giant container ship runs aground in the Suez Canal, blocking all waterborne traffic.

UACJ Automotive Whitehall Industries, which extrudes aluminum automotive components and assemblies, will take over an existing distribution center in Flagstaff, Arizona, to create a new facility making parts for electric vehicles. Local economic development officials estimate that the company will invest up to $60 million on the expansion. UACJ Whitehall expects to launch production in April.

Lion Electric, which builds all-electric trucks and buses, will build a battery manufacturing plant in Quebec. Slated for an early 2023 startup, the Cdn. $285 million factory will produce battery packs and modules made from lithium-ion cells. With a planned annual production capacity of 5 gigawatt-hours in battery storage, Lion will be able to electrify about 14,000 medium and heavy-duty vehicles per year.

emory-free steel has become a standard requirement for metal processors that burn or laser cut material into perfectly flat parts, which has caused service centers and toll processors alike to reevaluate the capabilities of their existing equipment. Coil Steel Processing (CSP) is one example. Founded in 2014, CSP processes up to 100,000 tons of steel a year at its Toledo facility. President Kevin Friedman, who had previous service center experience, started CSP by purchasing two older Herr-Voss cut-to-length lines that relied on roller leveling technology. Both CTL lines could process material up to 72 inches wide; one was for material up to 1/4 inch thick, the other for material up to 1/2 inch thick.

To give customers what they wanted, Friedman understood that a stretcher leveling upgrade was necessary. Developed over the past 25 years, the technology “delivers sheets that are completely memory free, so they remain perfectly flat as parts are cut out on burning tables,” Friedman says. “Memory-free sheet has become the standard requirement for certain premium product applications and end markets, and stretcher-leveling technology is becoming the standard in our industry. Many fabrication facilities are now specifying stretcher-leveled sheets.”

After seeing stretch cycle times improve and machine designs evolve, Friedman determined “it was time to make a move.” CSP processes coils into sheets, focusing on a range between 16 gauge and 5/8 inch thick. The material includes hot-rolled, hot-rolled pickled and oiled, cold-rolled, coated and floor plate. End customers include industrial manufacturing, such as fabrication, metal building products, racking and conveyor systems; construction, such as tanks and trench boxes, shielding equipment, observatories and greenhouses; and transportation, including truck, trailer and recreational vehicle parts, among others.

ome time ago, the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), Chicago, surveyed its members about the technologies they deployed in their companies.

The survey “revealed our industry was still largely using fax and email attachments,” says Luke Faulkner, AISC’s director of technology integration. “Beyond that, we found that the existing electronic data interchange (EDI) systems were all proprietary, which meant that an interested buyer would potentially have to produce a separate inquiry for each seller.

“AISC identified a rather large potential upside in offering a standard platform for EDI, namely that it could potentially cut hours of manual entry, scrubbing and refining out of the procurement process,” says Faulkner. “We further recognized that the majority of the industry would be better served and more likely to take advantage of automated information transfer if there was a single standard for it versus a different EDI portal for every vendor.”

hrough acquisitions in key geographies, upgrades of its processing lines, and the creation of an interactive platform for rapidly communicating with customers, leadership at Vorteq Coil Finishers LLC believes the company is reaching its potential as a national presence.

“We closed an acquisition at the end of 2019,” says CEO Jim Dockey, in reference to Western Metal Decorating, since rebranded as Vorteq Pacific. “It was a well-run family business that performed coil and sheet coating.” The company’s owners, a brother and sister team, wanted to retire.

Within Vorteq’s long-term strategic plan, “we wanted to add capabilities or geography or both, and this one gave us a footprint on the West Coast,” Dockey says. Western Metal Decorating was the third acquisition completed over a four-year period. “Now we have nine coating lines dotting the landscape from California to Pennsylvania. This puts us in a position to service a wider range of customers, including national accounts like those that manufacture building products. And we are able to roll out to national businesses.”

any businesses are becoming more mobile as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this is fueling a rise in demand for specialty vehicles—everything from on-the-go healthcare services, such as blood donation vans and mobile clinics, to food trucks. According to the marketing intelligence and advisory firm Mordor Intelligence, the specialty vehicle market was valued at $92.28 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $113.2 billion by 2026.

Fort Lupton, Colorado-based Summit Bodyworks has 30 years of experience creating innovative designs to fulfill this market need. The company recently delivered the first vehicle in its Peak body series, a 26-foot-long fiberglass mobile medical unit, to the Denver Health Department. It’s equipped with three separated rooms, including two examination beds, a blood draw chair and refrigeration units.

Some other Summit projects include a mobile chemotherapy compounding laboratory for Cancer Care Specialists of Illinois, which sits on a Freightliner M2 chassis, and a Multi-Purpose Command and Transport unit for the Meeker County, Minnesota, sheriff’s department.

abricators have always worked to become faster and more flexible, but advances in equipment technology make that goal easier to attain. Riker Products has been bending and processing tube since Walter Riker founded the Toledo, Ohio, company in 1932. It has streamlined its operations over the last several years by installing lasers and electric benders from BLM Group, Novi, Michigan.

Riker and BLM Group began working together after meeting at a Fabtech show, says Shelly Vargo, Riker’s executive vice president. “We needed to do some upgrading on our shop floor, so we took a team of employees to the show.” After reviewing quotes and visiting BLM Group’s North American headquarters in Michigan, the Riker team believed the machine tool manufacturer was a good match.

Riker Products installed two Elect 150 benders in 2018—and “once we ordered those, BLM Group invited two people from Riker to join them in Italy, where they have their main headquarters,” Vargo notes. There, they saw other products in the BLM Group line, watched parts run and “asked all the questions we wanted to ask. While we were there, we came to the decision to not only upgrade the benders but also add lasers, which would help us automate and diversify,” says Vargo.

and saws, band saw blades—and band saw features in general—have undergone technological improvements and innovations in recent years, although sometimes it has seemed like these innovations don’t happen as quickly as they do with other CNC machines. New developments are changing that, however. Many new and revitalized features are creating a “synergistic” result, where the sum of the various components working together far outweighs the benefit of the effects of the individual features.

The introduction of computer controls added opportunities for band saws to utilize new technology as well as improve the utility of pre-existing features. This, along with blade research and development, has improved sawing performance and efficiency tremendously over the years. Metal-cutting band saw blades have experienced many modifications and changes that enable improved sawing performance, particularly with metals that are difficult to cut due to various conditions, including work hardening and reducing vibration. Carbide-tipped blades have been common for years now, and they, along with bi-metal blades, have undergone increasing R&D, resulting in continued improvement and notable success in performance.