Case Study

A producer of extruded aluminum roll-up awning tubes (for travel trailers and recreational vehicles) was satisfied with their current product’s field performance, but the overall cost to manufacture was deemed too expensive. Based on this premise, Interstate Steel Company’s VA/VE team was asked to study the customer’s current design and to suggest a more cost effective replacement.

In order to reduce costs (and enhance performance), the VA/VE staff recommended a special highly flexible paint system continuously coil coated over a formable HSLAS G90 hot dip galvanized grade of flat rolled steel. The resulting prepainted HDG product provided great corrosion properties, superior structural integrity (less deflection) and sufficient ductility to successfully roll form the tight radius cross-section that was required for the RV awning tube. The total cost savings realized by our customer from converting from extruded aluminum to roll formed prepainted galvanized steel was in excess of $750K.