The 7 questions you should ask when selecting a roll form equipment supplier
1. Is the company ISO certified?
The rollforming equipment supplier should follow processes set by world wide government industry standards. ISO is concerned with quality management and what the supplier does to ensure the customer’s quality requirements are met. Processes are in place starting from the time the inquiry is received until even after the customer receives the rollformer and the follow up procedure is done.
2. Is the tooling designed with Copra FEA software?
A few rollform tooling design companies have purchased the software, but ask if they actually USE it on customer jobs! This software gives the ability to test the tooling on a virtual try-out mill before the miss is even built on the shop floor. The advantage of this is it pinpoints potential forming problems, and predicts the actual strip shape at each roll stand. The investment and time that goes into building unproven tooling can be astronomical on rollformers with many passes and/or complex hole patterns.
3. Does the roll forming machine supplier offer service worldwide?
Just because a company has sales offices all over the world does not mean they have service technicians everywhere.
4. Does the rollform equipment supplier offer warranty with service?
Look at the quote. Sometimes the price is very cheap because they don’t offer after sales support. What kind of warranty package do they have?
5. Does the supplier integrate your entire rollforming system in one location?
Some suppliers will get different locations or other suppliers to handle some of the components of your roll forming machine. The problem with this is, there isn’t a central control to ensure everything is integrated as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible. The components that Samco integrates are:
- Uncoilers and coil cars
- Rollforming mills
- Pre-punch and cut-off dies
- Roll tooling
- Electrical integration
- Material handling solutions such as panel stackers, stud bundlers. Also material handling solutions for custom jobs.
6. What components will be used on your rollformer?
Do they know what parts go into each component? For example, do they know the names of the manufactured parts of all the electrics? It’s very expensive to break down because of a small electrical part malfunctioning. It’s also very expensive to send a service person to a customer’s facility for a faulty switch. Samco only uses brand name components. We can be sure our rollformers won’t break down because of cheap parts. We also sell world wide so we want our customer to be able to get replacement parts if they need it and not have to pay for shipping.
7. If only roll tooling is being ordered, where is it being tested?
Do you have to take your old rolls off the mill while your supplier spends weeks testing the rolls? And if there is a problem with the rolls, they have to ship them back to their locations for grinding. Samco has tryout mills for various sizes of roll tooling in house so our customers have no downtime. We do all the testing at our plant and only send tooling that has been tested and approved.
