How to identify a professional tungsten carbide roller supplier？

Tag: tungsten carbide rollers, management system, ISO quality, Zhuzhou 

Last time, I shared with the purchase experience of the nailing tools. Since I have been buyer in the wire industry for 5 years, today we will talk about the experience of another accessories in the wire industry——tungsten carbide rollers.

The roller is a tool for producing plastic deformation of rolled material and it is an important consuming part for determining the efficiency and quality of rolling mill. In order to reduce production costs, improve the production efficiency of the mill, reduce the number of downtime, it is very critical for manufacturer of steel wire and rod to purchase cost-effective tungsten carbide rolls.

In March 2016, I received a task from the factory asking me to purchase three-dimensional rolls on our mills before May 2016 to produce cold-rolled ribbed bars. According to my past experience, I started from the Internet. My experience is to search for a long-term supplier from Alibaba or China Manufacturing. The factory or trader is not important. What is important is the professionalism, whether it has a perfect supply system, and whether it has passed the ISO quality management system. Certification, is the raw material of the product purchased from the formal channel?

I also found a lot of manufacturers of carbide rolls, but also found some old suppliers, Zhuzhou Relink is also in the list, yeah, their sells told me that the tungsten carbide three-dimensional roll is their first products. They told us that all their roller blanks are from Zhuzhou, which are produced using raw materials, and each batch of goods must provide total carbon, free carbon, particle size, composition analysis sheet, and index component analysis. Their roll blanks are HIP sintered, and each batch of rolls has stocks that can be traced back to the source. What is more surprising is that they have a stock of rough stock, and the delivery time is only half of that reported by other suppliers. This is good!

For the sake of prudence, I also purchased samples of rolls from several other suppliers who quoted us, but in the process, only Relink asked in detail about the various parameters of the rolling mill used in our factory, the material of the steel bars etc, recommended the appropriate grade for us. They also taught me that when the speed of the rolling mill exceeds 8m/s, it would be better to use the YGH30 grade for a longer service life and the roller will not crack. The professional salesman can recommend some suitable products according to the information of a few rolling mills I have given, even there is only some dimensions of the rolls.

Sure enough, We took advantage of the stock of blanks and sent the rolls to us at the best price in the shortest possible time. Other suppliers had slightly higher delivery and prices. Then, after trials, the facts tell me that my choice is not wrong. The samples provided by We are no different from those used by our previous mill suppliers, but the price is only one-third of the original. The sample rollers from other suppliers have not been worn or even cracked because of the lack of material selection. We is really a treasure supplier!

Therefore, as a professional procurement, while developing new suppliers, we must also maintain good suppliers. After a long period of communication, we can have a better understanding of the supplier and make some new attempts.

Edited by: Ashley Chan