What Are the Advantages of Steel Coil?

21 Jul.,2025

 

7 Uses of Steel Coil - Metal Exponents

What are some industries that use steel coils?

  1. Construction
  2. Automotive
  3. Packaging
  4. Consumer goods
  5. Machinery
  6. Energy and electrical equipment

The uses of steel coils are diverse and wide-ranging. These steel sheets are versatile in that they are used in many industries, for different purposes, and as raw materials for a range of products.

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Steel coils are thin sheets of steel rolled into a long, cylindrical shape. They come in two forms: hot-rolled and cold-rolled, based on the production process. Steel coils are popular in many industries due to their high strength, durability, resistance to weather and corrosion, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness.

In this article, we enumerate some industries that make use of steel coils and discuss how these sheets of metal are used in the respective fields. Read on to know more!

Construction

Like many other metal materials, steel coils are also popular in the construction industry. They’re used as materials for roofing sheets. building panels, pipes, walls, reinforcing bars (rebars), and structural components like beams, columns, and trusses.

For roofing sheets, walls, and building panels, the steel coils are unrolled and flattened into sheets before being cut into the desired size and shape. As for pipes, rebars, and other structural components, the coils are unrolled, cut to length, and then welded or rolled into cylindrical shapes before being cut to the desired lengths.

Automotive

Steel coils can also be commonly used when producing various automotive components. These include car body parts, chassis components, and even exhaust pipes.

The steel is unrolled, cut to size, and then stamped into shape with specialized machinery to produce doors, hoods, and fenders. It can also undergo stamping and welding to form chassis or engine components, or welding and bending to make exhaust system pipes.

Packaging

While steel coils are most often unrolled, cut to size, stamped, and welded to produce metal cans, this is not the only way they are used in the packaging industry.

Foil packaging is another product that comes from steel coils after the sheets pass through a series of rollers to reduce their thickness and increase their length, and a layer of aluminum is applied to provide protection against the elements.

Another application is steel drums that are used for the storage and transportation of liquids and powders. Formed in a similar way to metal cans, the resulting drums are coated with a layer of paint or other protective coatings to prevent corrosion.

Finally, steel coils are also used to produce steel straps that secure packages and pallets during the transportation of goods. The steel goes through a combination of stamping and heat-treating to achieve the desired shape and flexibility.

Consumer goods

Quite a number of things you find in stores are actually made of steel coils. These include appliances like refrigerators, washing machines, and ovens, furniture like desks, chairs, and shelving, tools like hammers, wrenches, and saws, sports equipment like golf clubs, tennis rackets, and bicycles, and various kinds of hardware like nails, screws, and bolts. For all of these, the coils are unrolled and flattened before going through a combination of processes including forging, welding, stamping, and heat-treating.

Machinery

Many machine parts are made out of steel coils, like frames, bearings and shafts, gears, springs, and engine components. The benefit of steel coils in the machinery industry is how flexible they are—because they can be shaped into a variety of forms, there are so many standard and customizable machine parts they can be formed into.

Energy and electrical equipment

Steel coils are used in the construction of wind turbines and transmission lines for the electrical power industry. They are also used in the production of pipelines, boiler tubes, pressure vessels, and solar panels. Their strength and durability are key in ensuring that the products formed from steel coils are long-lasting and reliable.

Steel coils are also used to produce transformers, various types of motors, generators, electromagnets, and electrical cabinets.

Key Takeaway

As you can see from this article, there are many applications and uses of steel coils in a wide range of industries. What makes steel coils so versatile is their strength, durability, corrosion resistance, and ability to be formed into the many shapes and sizes required by various industries.

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Though most of these applications require steel coils to undergo the same processes, it’s surprising just how many products are eventually created, such that steel coils can be useful for just about any industrial purpose.

Benefits & Tradeoffs of All-Stainless Steel Coils | The Super Blog

Oftentimes, using stainless steel components seems like a simple solution to corrosion on coils. You may see fins or tubes or other parts of the system show signs of corrosion, and it seems that the best option is to change the coil to stainless steel, solving the corrosion problem permanently. While this seems like a simple solution to a significant problem in the HVAC, industrial, and commercial systems where coils are found, the answer to the question “should I make an all-stainless coil?” is far more complex.

While it’s true that stainless steel has excellent corrosion resistance properties, when used in a heat exchanger it can have poor heat transfer characteristics. So, it's possible that by solving the corrosion problem using stainless, other system issues could result. Performance reduction, exceeding fan or motor capacities, and exceeding space or structural limitations of the existing unit are all possibilities when changing a system’s materials to stainless. Finally, there are the economics – is the stainless steel solution a viable commercial option for the installation?

As the system engineer, you are faced with a dilemma: meet the overall system constraints, solve the corrosion problem, and maintain a budget so the project moves forward. These priorities often conflict with each other, but the evaluation and balancing of these objectives are where Super Radiator can lend a hand.

To better understand the potential impact of using an all stainless steel heat exchanger, let’s evaluate an example 400,000 BTU/HR (33 tons or 119 kW) cooling coil. For the example, we’ll use 45° F water and a 36” x 45” coil with standard copper tubes and aluminum fins. The coil for this installation will be 12” deep, weigh 320 pounds and have a cost factor of 1.0. This is our base unit and is the component currently installed in the system.

The question is what is the impact of changing the heat exchanger to all stainless steel? There are two ways to evaluate the case: keep the same unit capacity or fit the space of the current unit.

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Here are the results of using all stainless steel:

  • Maintaining capacity: Air pressure drop = increased 2.3x; Weight increase= 6x; Depth increase= 2.2x ; Cost Factor = 6.8x.
  • Air pressure drop = no change; weight increase 1.5x; Capacity Decrease = 40%; Cost Factor = 4.

To summarize, changing the coil from the copper and aluminum to all stainless steel will be a cost increase between 4 and 7 times the original coil. Moreover, it will either not fit in the existing unit, or short the system capacity by 40%.

If the system being designed is new, the larger size or different capacity could be reconciled with adjustments to other system components, such as changing the fan to accommodate the higher levels of air friction or altering the unit design to create more space for the larger coil. However, for an existing system, this may not be possible.

Stainless steel or other high corrosion-resistant material may be the only option in some systems: high temperatures, abrasive environments, extreme caustic chemical solution. For many cases, a basic coil with a high-quality coil coating can solve most coil corrosion issues. Let’s evaluate the impact of this option.

Based on Super Radiator research, using a coil coating has little impact to the thermal performance of the coil. However, coating does incur additional cost compared to an uncoated coil. Electro-deposition (E-coat) and baked phenolic (such as Heresite P413) are the most common, quality coil coatings. The example coil, with the coating will have cost factor of 1.3. The price is higher than the bare coil, but coating is a great option to solve the corrosion issue, meet the performance needs of the system, and fit the space.

Copper fin and tube are often considered for corrosive, abrasive, or harsh environments. For select installations, an all-copper construction is a good option. Adding to our example from earlier in the document, a copper coil will have a cost factor of 1.5. However, the copper construction does have the benefit of 3.5% increased capacity. Using copper fins keeps the air friction the same as with aluminum fins. The coil weight does increase by 1.8x.

Is all stainless steel construction the best option to solve the corrosion issue on your finned tube coil? It may be. But there may be better options. Give Super Radiator a call today. We're here to help.