IS NOTHING MADE IN THE WEST ANYMORE

[Flying10uk]

There have been all sorts of quality problems with "cheap" imported metals in recent years but the person at the end of the queue/line who has actually purchased the metal may not actually see any price reduction, only quality reduction. I have personally experienced continuous welded steel tube that has been such poor quality that the simple act of clamping it in a saw vice is enough to split the weld and it even cracked with the very bare minimum of vice pressure. Other defects may include poor surface finish and variations in thickness which may cause problems depending on usage.

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[CINDERS]

There have been all sorts of quality problems with "cheap" imported metals in recent years

I was a safety superintendent where we built a Magnetite processing plant for a Chinese consortium (Australia is good at selling itself literally) it had 16,000 tonnes of structural steel which came in sealed 40 foot containers it was bent all over the place the columns some had been butt joined & welded (pieces) with what looked like a runny nose weld, the paint we could not get an MSDS when welding it for toxic fumes so all welders had air feds on, cleats were on wrong, fishplates did not fit and they sent the top steel of the magnetic screening plant first. And this is structural steel.......................
The 75 Tonne pedestal crane they had on the ROM pad to change out the 70 tone cone for the primary crusher folded the boom when it did a test lift of 70 tonnes the plate steel for the boom was only 10mm instead of 25mm T-1 steel who ever passed that crane I hope they got in the sh*te thank goodness no one was injured the new cone was un-damaged I had left by that stage thank goodness as tracking it back to China would have been fun for the investigation team.