Stainless steel can be divided into five categories: coil, plate, profile, pipe and accessories. Profiles are all kinds of different shaped materials made of plates, including angle steel, flat steel, I-beam and channel steel. Pipes are seamless and welded pipes. Accessories mainly refer to elbows, flanges and other small accessories. The most important are coil and plate. Coils and plates are actually same material. Original plates are generally thick plates. Because they are too thick to be rolled. Generally they cannot be rolled above 16mm.
The prices of coils and plates are different. The price of coils is a little higher because it’s calculated according to the actual weight. The price of plates is lower because it is calculated according to the theory weight. There is a difference between these two weight. For example, the actual thickness of 10mm plate may be 9.6mm. This causes the price difference.
Stainless steel plate is divided into hot rolled and cold rolled plate according to the rolling process of the rolling mill (rolling mill is the name of the machine for rolling plate). Hot rolled plate is usually marked as No.1 and cold rolled plate is usually marked as 2B or BA (BA has a better and brighter surface than 2B, close to the mirror surface. The best and brightest surface is mirror, which has no stock. It needs to be processed.
The thickness of domestic cold rolled plate is generally less than 3mm. The thickness of hot rolled plate is generally more than 3mm. There are both hot rolled and cold rolled for 3mm thickness. But the thickness of imported cold rolled sheet can be less than 4mm or even less than 6mm. Hot rolled plates whose thickness is between 3 mm to 12 mm are called medium plates. Those above 12 mm are called thick plates, which can be thicker than 120 mm. Cold rolled plates are cold-rolled thin plates.