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QUESTION:My son works for an outfit that makes skid steer loaders. He can (and has)
bought off cuts and odd bits of steel from the machine shop for me at 10
cents a lb. but the company won't identify the steel for him. Most of it is
color coded and he has been told that the blueprints are only identified
with the color codes, that the machinists aren't even allowed to know what
the various steels are. Does anyone know why this company is so close
mouthed about the steels they are using? I doubt they are custom alloys,
nothing looks particularly exotic, the one piece I have used is a
wonderfully free machining steel however. Why the mystery?
ANSWER: Your son works for an outfit that makes skid steer loaders.
They want to make it harder for people who steal drawings or other wise copy
their product. We do the same thing and put our own number on the material.
It also helps when we buy the material from several different suppliers to
avoid the problem with different color codes for the sme type of material.
Our numbers identifiy not only a different type of steel, aluminum etc...
But also the size and shape. As an example say you have a round steel bar
that's 3" in diameter of 4130. All the material that's 3" round of 4130
steel get one number assigned to it. A 3" round of a 1018 gets another
number assigned to it. So for every different size, shape and type of
material gets it's own number assigned to it.
The bad part is if you end up with a piece that has no number then you
can't identify it and it gets tossed.
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