Buyer Guide

A purchasing manager with three quotations spread across $60,000 had no way to rank them, because every bid was priced per machine and none per tonne of steel. This builds the per-tonne number from four inputs, works a 1,200-tonne example to about $56 a tonne, and shows which specification lines move it most. It also sets out the three cases where the figure misleads, and what to add to each bid before comparing prices.

A 400-tonne press bay promised four weeks from delivery to first good part and took seven. The calendar was never one schedule but five overlapping clocks, and only some of them move for money. This breaks the six weeks into concrete, rigging, utilities, commissioning and process tuning, with the week-by-week plan and the five pre-shipment documents that keep the dates honest.

Most coil line budgets stop at the machine and the freight. Electrical scope is a separate four-line purchase: supply capacity, cable and containment, panel and protection, earthing and bonding. This article works a 41 kW line through the arithmetic, from 27 kW of demand at a 0.65 diversity factor to 31 kVA at the terminals, then prices a 30-metre run against a 120-metre one. It also covers 380 V into 480 V and where the model stops.

A factory acceptance test measures the machine in the one place it will never run again. This guide separates what a pass certificate can prove from what only site testing can, names the five conditions a factory cannot reproduce, and gives the four acceptance numbers to write into the purchase order before the line is built. It also covers what a signature on the acceptance sheet really commits you to.

Delivery disputes are decided at signature, not at delivery. This guide separates the four dates inside one delivery promise, explains how liquidated damages should be structured and capped, and shows where risk actually transfers under FOB, CIF and DAP. It also names what a penalty clause cannot recover, including voltage mismatch and the buyer's own delays, and lists four contract lines worth changing before the deposit is paid.

A 12-tonne coil line ships as three or four crated units, and the freight bill follows the packing. This breaks the landed cost into ocean freight, port charges, duty, inland haul and packing.

This covers what a policy typically includes, the wear parts that carry the real money, what a claim costs in downtime and freight, and three clauses worth changing before signature.

A used coil line usually costs 45-55% less than new, but the landed line closes part of that gap before the first coil runs. This compares purchase, install, spares and availability over five years.

Most of what goes wrong in a coil line's first week was decided before the machine arrived: the slab, the supply, the alignment. Four faults account for nearly every early failure, and each one has a test that takes under an hour. This lays out a seven-day plan with an owner for each day, and says plainly what the first week cannot prove.

A coil line that runs perfectly in one building can arrive in the next one out of alignment by 2 mm, and no amount of running-in brings it back. The move itself is a rigging job; the result is an alignment job. This sets out the order of work, the three measurements to take before anything is unbolted, and the four parts that are usually cheaper to replace than to move.

Every quotation offers more capacity than the job needs, and every buyer has to decide how much of it to accept. Thickness headroom is cheap to add at build time and impossible to retrofit later.

A failed site acceptance test almost never means the machine is broken. It means the coil, the power supply or the test speed was not what the specification assumed.

This guide separates a handover into machine, material and fault knowledge, prices the four cost blocks that never appear on a quotation, and sets out the clause wording that makes training enforceable.

This guide takes one 1,300 mm enquiry and separates the scope decisions behind the gap: mandrel type, roll count, control class and the boundary that decides who pays for site work.