Galvan Hot Dip Quality Control and Assurance

At Galvan Industries, Quality is standard operating procedure. All products must pass our in-house Quality Control and Assurance Program.

Before galvanizing, your steel goes through a series of cleaning steps at Galvan, including degreasing, pickling, and fluxing. Degreasing removes dirt, oil, and organic residues, while the acidic pickling bath will remove mill scale and iron oxide.

What sets us apart is our ability to blast clean before these steps. In cases where especially heavy rust, dirt, paint or laquer must be removed first, steel can be sent through our in-house automated blast cleaning process. Galvan blast cleaning will get your steel clean to SSPC-6 or SSPC-10, usually in one pass. Blast cleaning also speeds the chemical cleaning process and gives the finished galvanized steel a more uniform appearance.

The final surface preparation step, fluxing, will remove any remaining oxides and coat the steel with a protective layer to prevent any further oxide formation prior to galvanizing. There are no shortcuts. All necessary steps are taken to ensure the molten zinc reacts properly with your steel.
After galvanizing, all finished material is inspected to ensure it meets our customers' expectations and industry standards before it leaves the facility. This involves both coating measurements and visual inspections.

“Mil readings” or coating measurements are taken with a magnetic thickness gauge to ensure the proper thickness of the zinc coating according to the applicable ASTM standard. The specifications, such as ASTM A123 provide minimum zinc coating requirements for given material classes and measured steel thicknesses.

We also judge the quality of the coating by a visual inspection. An inspection of finish and appearance is done with an unmagnified visual observation of all parts and pieces of a hot-dip galvanized product or assembly to ensure specification requirements have been met.

We also perform regular quality audits to ensure that our established standards are maintained.
Our in-house Quality Control and Assurance Program is among the most stringent in the industry.
All our finished products conform to ASTM, AASHTO, SSPC or Mil Specs.

Galvan is a member of the American Galvanizers Association (AGA) and is involved in developing industry-wide standards for galvanizing quality. We were instrumental in the AGA's development of a QA program and strongly support its use. In fact, we were one of the first galvanizers to meet AGA recommended standards.

When quality is your first priority in choosing a galvanizer, choose Galvan.