SCS UPDATE - March 2008

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Published by the SCS Producer Group - Issue 28, March 2008

Singer Steel Now Producing SCS Sheets

Singer Steel Company is now producing SCS sheets from its Cleveland, Ohio facility. The family-owned service center completed startup of its new SCS line shown here, plus a beefy stretcher leveler that can flatten material up to 1/2". This gives Singer the ability to service the growing demand for "laser-flat" clean SCS sheets in heavier gauges.

For more info or to get a quote for SCS processing, call Joe McCaffery at:
330•562•7200
or you can email Joe now.

Meet The SCS Producers

March 2008 Contents

          Singer Steel Now Producing
          SCS Sheets

          Meet The SCS Producer Group

          New SCS Web Site Launched

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Read Past Issues

The bank of SCS knowledge has quickly spread from its original home in Red Bud, Illinois throughout the USA and onto Europe. Now, four years after the flat-rolled processing industry first learned of this unique, value-added process, there are nine operating SCS lines. They're run by nine different companies, all working to educate more customers about SCS benefits while they increase production to meet the demand of SCS converts.

In mid-2007, US-based producers formed an association which has come to be known as the SCS Producers Group. Though some members of the group have long been industry rivals, they

recognized there were valuable benefits in working together to
get this new "species" of hot rolled fully adopted by fabricators.

SCS Producer Group tour

Steve Fuhrman, Central Steel & Wire's representative to the group explains: "A fabricator has to have good reasons to switch from the hot band or HRPO they currently use to SCS. There are lots of great reasons, but it's an education process that we have to walk the customer through. If nine different companies go into the market, each with a slightly different way of explaining SCS, the customers we're trying to reach are bound to get confused."

So presenting a uniform message of (1) exactly what the SCS process is, (2) what advantages it imparts to ordinary hot rolled, and (3) how to use it most effectively in various manufacturing processes are chief goals of the association. But they are far from the only goals.

At a recent gathering of the SCS Producers Group at JDM Steel Service, host Rich Merlo points out a subtlety of brush performance on an SCS Coil Line, while Producers operating SCS Sheet Lines listen and learn.	We've also started working with OEMs of fabricating equipment, like laser table manufacturers, so they know
	how SCS performs and can offer their
customers guidance in getting the most from it," adds Dave Lippucci, Feralloy's SCS Product Manager. "Assurance from the equipment OEM that they've worked with SCS and even have standard settings for it is very reassuring to the new SCS user. That kind of outreach to the OEMs is best done through the Producer Group." "There's also a pragmatic aspect to getting together every three or four months to compare notes on items like brush wear, filter performance and other nuts and bolts items," observes John Grossheim of Fulton County Processing. "You might think there'd be some reluctance to help each other out that way, but it's not the case. Each group member wants to see the others succeed because that grows the overall demand for SCS."
This very publication is now a cooperative effort of the SCS Producer's Group. For the last three and a half years, SCS UPDATE was published and distributed solely by The Material Works (TMW) , the inventor and licensor of the SCS process. Effective with this issue, the SCS Producer's Group is the publisher. "SCS UPDATE has been an invaluable marketing tool for us," remarks Chris Liefer, TMW's Sales Director and delegate to the Producer's Group. "After all, it helped convince some of these companies – and others to come – to get into the SCS business. But today, the entire flat-rolled processing industry is aware of SCS, so we felt UPDATE needed to redirect its message exclusively to the users of SCS. In doing that, it needs to represent the perspectives of all the SCS producers, not just the first one. I guess that's the natural next step in SCS maturing as a product."

New SCS Web Site A Resource For End-Users

One of the first initiatives undertaken by the SCS Producer Group was a complete revamp of the SCS web site – www.scsprocess.com.

When it debuted in July 2004, the SCS web site was designed to explain the technical underpinnings of the SCS process and the actual equipment used. As time went on, more user experience, application knowledge and performance results were added to the web site, but the original structure was somewhat confining, making it hard to group all the info on a particular topic into one place. It also wasn't obvious enough where one should go to find out who was producing and distributing SCS.

The new SCS web site addresses those issues, presenting visitors a rich library of SCS-related information

arranged by topic areas of interest to

users. For example, everything you want to know about welding SCS can be found on a single SCS Welding page. Information on each SCS production site and easy-to-use inquiry forms are located in the Where To Buy section. Last but not least, all previous SCS UPDATE articles are indexed by topic (i.e. laser cutting, paint prep, etc.) in the new SCS Resources Section, as well as being cross-referenced in the Uses and Savings Section.

We think you'll find the new SCS web site to be very comprehensive, yet easier to use. Please explore it and pass the address on to others whom you think will be interested.