The process starts with your design objectives.

The welded blank evaluation and development process starts with your vehicle design objectives for performance, weight, timing and cost. At this important stage, Bethlehem engineers work closely with you to develop an exact material specification, defining the steel that will provide the right stiffness, strength, corrosion resistance and manufacturing properties to meet each objective.

In addition, Bethlehem engineers can provide assistance in defining blank shape and weld line location. Proper weld line location is critical for acceptable stamping formability.

This early involvement of our people not only takes the guesswork out of the decision whether or not to use welded blanks, it also speeds up the entire welded blank part development process.

Producing the right steel to meet specifications.

Bethlehem Applications Engineers know how to match each phase of the steelmaking process to the material specification. This makes sure the steel will have the exact thickness, width, coating and mechanical properties to produce the welded blank that meets your requirements. This includes:

• Defining steel composition for the BOF furnace and ladle treatments.
• Producing internally clean slabs to begin the rolling process.
• Hot-rolling slabs into coils with exact mechanical properties and superior flatness by controlling slab reheat temperature, gauge reduction and coiling temperature.
• Cold-rolling steel to required thickness tolerances.
• Annealing and final reduction in the Temper Mill to achieve exact final specifications for mechanical properties and surface roughness.
• Coating hot-dip galvanized, galvannealed or electrogalvanized - to achieve the required corrosion resistance.

Preparing steel for welded blanks.

Once the steel is produced to specifications, the next step is to package and ship the coils to processors for slitting and cutting into intermediate blanks. Pieces are matched to coil size to minimize scrap and then are cut to the required shapes. Blanks are then repackaged to eliminate damage when shipped to the welder.

Bethlehem manages the packaging, shipping and sourcing for each of these operations so that everything arrives at the right place at the right time.