I deal with both American as well as many overseas suppliers , and i find that chinas quality is substandard.
Again , china will not accept steel from thier country......go figure.
They are dead set against any china material for any vessls built under thier requirments, our QC china manual has this as a requirment...again if the steel is "OK" why will they not use it??

ASK could be the manufacturers stamp.

Granted, this experience was many years ago, BUT...

I worked at a pipe manufacturing plant.  As an operator on the SAW, both inside and outside positions, and as a repair welder on the repair line, we always preferred ANYTHING BUT steel made in ANY of the Asian countries.  US and German was about the best.  French was pretty good.  Some others were very tolerable.

The Asian steel coils were so bad that we spent so much time repairing bad pipe that we couldn't keep up with the mill.  Had to set up extra repair stations and take pipe outside to fix and still worked way past the production stage to get everything shippable.  We also ended up totally scrapping a lot of the Asian steel. 

Management told us that at the price difference we could afford to scrap 50% of product off the mill and still make a profit.  But you talk about bad for moral.  The crew hated it when we had to run that stuff.  But they would only run better steel when the customer requested it in the Contract Documents. 

It is all about the profits.

Have a Great Day,  Brent

jrw159 if you cannot make a positive input to the question raised I suggest you keep your personal OPINIONS to your self.

"The scottish fellow, is that Billy Connely, I thought you had given up welding?"

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