Smooth clean surface sheet steel

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SCS is an abbreviation for smooth clean surface, a process applied to hot rolled sheet steel to remove nearly all mill scale and clean the steel surface. The SCS process was researched and developed by The Material Works, Ltd. of Red Bud, Illinois USA, which holds US patents #6,814,815, #6,205,830 B1, #6,732,561 B2, #6,814,089, #7,081,167, #7,081,168, #7,081,169 and #7,156,926.

The SCS process feeds hot rolled sheet steel, either as individual blanks or as a continuous strip that is uncoiled, into the SCS "brushing machine". Within the machine the steel is passed between sets of rotating roller brushes that spin on an axis perpendicular to the sheet's direction of travel. The roller brush exterior is comprised of an engineered abrasive, similar to Scotchbrite, that makes contact with the steel under pressure. Each roller brush spins against the steel at a speed of 900 to 1000 revolutions per minute, "scrubbing away" the outer layers of mill scale - hematite and magnetite - and most of the inner layer, wustite. The remaining wustite layer is only a few microns thick and highly polished to a smooth surface. Three such roller brushes are typically applied to each surface of the steel sheet, for a total of six roller brushes per SCS brushing machine. Numerous spray nozzles within the brushing machine provide water to rinse the removed scale and any other debris from the steel surface and to cool the friction heat generated in the brushes. The water is filtered and re-used in this closed-loop rinsing/filtering system.

The SCS process imparts a measure of rust resistance to the sheet steel, so that when exposed to a noncondensing atmosphere, its propensity to rust is markedly less that the hot rolled steel that is fed into the SCS brushing machine. The exact metallurgical phenomenon underlying this transformation of the surface to make it more rust resistant is not fully understood; however, it is theorized that the remaining wustite layer (chemical symbol FeO) contains a much lower proportion of oxygen than the removed hematite and magnetite layers and is, therefore, more stable and less prone to oxidation when exposed to a noncondensing atmosphere.

SCS processed steel, commonly referred to by its trade name "SCS", is produced by several steel service centers under license to The Material Works, Ltd. It is supplied to manufacturers and processors of sheet steel as a replacement for ordinary hot rolled black sheet steel or hot rolled pickled and oiled (HRPO) steel.