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Material availability / lead times

zberto

Plastic
Joined
Aug 3, 2015
I realize this topic has frequently come up regarding the availability of raw materials, consumables, hardware, etc.

However I am curious what everyone is experiencing in terms of availability and pricing of raw materials i.e. Aluminum, Steel, and other metals.

I am not a shop a owner, I am simply a machinist at a medium size shop catering mostly to Aerospace, with some tool and die work sprinkled in.

I surmise that prices have increased anywhere from 30-100% on average in the last two years. Currently, the availability of material has gotten extremely dire. Lead times have gotten longer and longer. With big chunks of aluminum, 7075, as well as 7050 taking very long times to procure. We have no shortage of work at my shop in fact we have a multi-year backlog. However, all of that is irrelevant if you can't make chips.

I started noticing these supply chain issues before Covid in 2019. Things got progressively worse from 2020 onward. At the height of the pandemic things were never as bad as they are now. I find this strange considering we are (most likely) on the tail end of this pandemic and restrictions have been lifted in the majority of places.

Is it the mills that aren't producing, the inability to source raw feedstock, energy prices, labor shortage, transportation and logistics issues, or big buyers purchasing everything in sight ? Most likely it is a combination of all these factors. I am curious what other people have to say.
 
About the only thing I have bought that didn't seem to shoot way up in price lately was brass rounds. But who knows, could be the supplier had some old stock they sold me. They base their pricing off what they paid for it. I haven't encountered any shortages, but I make what most people would consider small parts and most of the oddball material items are always very short runs. Bulk to me is 100-200# of something and then it is either 1018, 4140, 6061, or 360 brass, nothing special.
 
Yes, I know aluminum has basically doubled since 2020. I wonder if prices will come back down, or if this is "the new normal". Probably the latter. As I mentioned earlier obtaining 7075 and 7050 is becoming exceedingly difficult and we typically have big Aerospace companies who are wiling to purchase it on our behalf. I guess this is what happens when you nuke the economy and double if not triple the amount of money in circulation. The supply issues are impeding our ability to get work done which has ripple effects that carry on down the line as our customers are not able to get parts. I should also mention that we are only able to order material produced in the U.S. or allied countries.

These price increases in materials will ultimately get absorbed in two ways a reduction in a companies profit margin or prices increases passed on to the end purchaser or taxpayer in the case of government work. But inflation is only 7.5% they say, looks like someone put the decimal in the wrong place.
 
I'll only add that structural steel has doubled - tripled in price over the past two years. My fab supplier also mentions having trouble sourcing basic steel sheet metal.

Everything is a struggle. And you're lucky if they give you a delivery date. Of course they won't tell you they're going to miss the delivery date they gave you until after they've already missed the delivery date. Then they won't give you another delivery date for fear of missing that one.
 
I had to call 3 vendor before I could find .5x1 6061. 2 of the vendors were not going to be able to fill the order for 6 weeks. Only a few hundred pounds so not like I'm trying to buy the entire supply.

Weird times we are in.
 
Weird times indeed. Whenever I inquire with my superiors as to why we can't get material the answer is something like "people are sick", or "they cant get drivers". Things should be looking up right now but instead it seems you always have to continually lower your expectations. I realize the situation in Ukraine is not helping things, but I feel like there is something at play that the general public is not aware of.
 
yea I'm continually bugging our supply/purchasing agent when where material is. And funny zberta mention things were not aware of, I was ordering parts from our machine builder and we were talking about this exact thing and he mentioned he was having a hard time getting belts from Gates. After he dug for a bit he learned the a polymer used in the belt production was being prioritized to syringe production.
 
yea I'm continually bugging our supply/purchasing agent when where material is. And funny zberta mention things were not aware of, I was ordering parts from our machine builder and we were talking about this exact thing and he mentioned he was having a hard time getting belts from Gates. After he dug for a bit he learned the a polymer used in the belt production was being prioritized to syringe production.

Now that's a connection I'd not have made without some head scratching.

This whole Covid Kerfuffle is a good reminder how delicate the interweave of world manufacturing and commerce is, and how little it takes to really F-up the system. And that's without a major war added (at least, up until recently).

Maybe we should remember this when things return to "normal". Sometimes bitching about waiting in line for gas, or having to pay an extra $.50 for our takeout isn't worth getting into a screaming match over?
 
Yes, prices and lead-times on material are up across the board for us. 7000 series aluminum was always a pain to get but now it's way worse. Adjust outgoing quotes and keep trucking along.
 
7000 series aluminum was always a pain to get but now it's way worse. Adjust outgoing quotes and keep trucking along.

Well, I'm selling off some of my 7050 and 7075 stock. Don't have certs, most materials do have mill markings. You can check my recent ad in the "for sale" forum for 7050-T7451, but there's more than that in stock. Shipping to PA by Yellow would be about a week.

[Sorry for the blatant plug, but it seemed not too off topic]
 
Just got quote for truckload qtys of 4140, and they are now out to mid November.

Custom alum mill @ 62 weeks.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
What’s wild is the lead time issue can be on the oddest things. A while back we quoted and ordered something mundane, like 2” square 1018, 2 feet long from McMaster. After a couple weeks it didn’t show, I got the purchaser to look into it and it was 5-6 weeks. What!

I hear that copper is hard to get at the moment as well. There’s a shop in the area that focuses on copper components and apparently they’re running out of material for their orders and sending folks home, because some materials are 52-weeks plus. Crazy…
 
With record-high prices on commodities like steel and aluminum, why are the capitalist investors not firing up shuttered mills, or expanding the ones already working??

Give it time, runaway inflation and soon-to-be-rising interest rates will cool the economy. The Fed should should have been raising rates at least slightly 6-9 months ago. Inflation got ahead of them, unfortunately.

A slower economy will allow the supply chain to catch up...and hopefully have a bit of a surplus eh? Surplus's help moderate prices back to competitive, sustainable levels.

We primarily serve the underground mining industry, and the OEM's have back-ordered many different replacement parts over the last year or two. Bad for them, good for the Cathouse...haha.

At least until the supply chain shortage maybe bites me on the ass...

Fortunately, we order a large quantity (~100k pounds) through a distributor (as they stock and release EOQ's) 6-12 months ahead of the 4140 round bar we use.

Our next big order is due in June, so far it's on schedule, although we expect the date to slip.

Time to order again, I figure over a year's lead time now...what can you do?

ToolCat
 
Has anyone read of large imports of material to China? They had been major users of steel up until a few years ago, when their economy cooled. Did the demand increase again, or am I misremembering?


Aha! I'm not as crazy as the voices in me head tell me I am. A search for "why are there raw materials shortages" brings up results like this:

Pandemic causes shortage of raw materials - price rises on construction chemicals market

and this:

Raw material prices and supply shortages skyrocket (in 7 charts)
 
Steel imports TO China?
Shirley you jest?
They pour over half of the worlds steel and export.


per your link:

That whole container shortage thing is a complete line of Schidt too.
I know that the docks are spewing that, but when there is 100 boats lined up to offshore, it's not an empty container issue.

There was an hour long show on TV a cpl months ago, and they listened to all the reasons and also interviewed the other side as well.
They did not draw any conclusions, and did not thrown anyone that they interviewed under the bus, and left the viewer to determine a conclusion on their own.
One guy that lives near the docks said that empty's are piled up so much, that drivers had already started dropping empty's on the road on his residential street.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
It may have been stainless I was thinking of (pretty sure they're a net importer of it), but I also remember reading that they'd shut many of their furnaces down due to pollution concerns.
 
... before the Olympics!

LOL!


Or maybe not LOL?
Are we all going through so much of this crunch b/c of a bloody sporting event? :skep:

I already have zero use for sports (especially organized) don't really need to add THAT to the equazsion!


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
With record-high prices on commodities like steel and aluminum, why are the capitalist investors not firing up shuttered mills, or expanding the ones already working??

ToolCat

There has been tremendous consolidation in the US steel market. While everyone was sleeping, Cleveland Cliffs bought AK and Arcelor Mittal US operations. They went from zero to #1. They are a company that knows how to make money and they own the US iron ore market. Nucor is also profit minded.

Cliffs: 16.5 million tons
Nucor: 12.7 million tons
U.S. Steel: 10.7 million tons
Steel Dynamics Inc (SDI): 7.7 million tons

Scrap flows are also critical to steel supply and that is snarled with automotive affected by shortages and the shifts to alternative materials.

Aluminum is another animal. It requires high grade bauxite and cheap power. Canada was a significant producer using hydro power. Power is not as cheap now. China is the largest producer by far. Russia was exporting 4% of the global supply.

Stainless players are US Steel, Cliffs, Outokumpu, North American Stainless and ATI Metals. All are struggling. Cliffs and US Steel tool capacity offline. NAS was shutdown for supply chain problems. ATI shifted production of 304 to 316 unannounced which caused a big mess downstream.

New industry trends are consuming more stainless.

In all of these categories, 232 tariffs are restricting Chinese imports. Whether this is “good” or “bad” depends on whether you are selling or buying.
 








 
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