Import Polishing Holds No Grit To Affilaited Steel & Tubes Polishing

Mediocrity is no longer an accepted practice among many end users of stainless steel tubing, especially when it comes to tube polishing. Sure, going off shore can save you a few bucks in the short run on the raw material, but how about over time? Sacrificing quality with your customers or end users can hurt your bottom line and with today's economic uncertainty, none of us can afford to feel the pain.

If you've been in the metal industry for some time like me, you already know that the quality of import steel is very different than that of domestic stainless steel. And what's more, the polishing...well we'll just say, it lacks the quality one would expect, but we have gotten use to it since the "price" was right...cheap.

I recently had a customer provided me with what his importer called a 180 grit polished finish. The quality was more along the lines of a mill finish (no polish at all - see the image below). He seemed a bit frustrated, not originally over the quality of the polish but that his product was suffering sales and a large part was due to his decision to save a few dollars by "going" cheap on the polishing from his offshore supplier. Now, if you have any insight as to what 180 grit is or looks like you'll quickly see that the import looks much duller and less polished. If you're not sure, then you will want to see the example on the left. The 180 grit finish should be "gritty", yet have a polished look. 

In order to salvage this customers product and help him boost his sales, we where able to provide him with a true 180 grit finsih to his stainless steel tubing. In the end, the customer not only learned a valuable lesson; going cheap in the short run does not mean greater profits down the road, but that import polishing does not match what we can accomplish domestically.