Wuxi Baojiangcheng Steel is a leading supplier of steel coils, steel plates, steel pipes, steel wires and bars in China. When steel wire is rolled into the shape requested by the customer, it is called a "coil," but this term, which is widely used in the steel industry to describe coils, is somewhat vague and can be confusing. Here we take a more detailed look at stainless steel coil and its different forms.

Stainless steel is initially produced in the form of slabs and then undergoes a converting process using a Z-mill, which converts the slabs into coils before further rolling. These wide rolls are usually made around 1250mm (sometimes slightly wider) and are known as 'milled rolls'.

These wide coils are further processed using a range of manufacturing techniques, such as slitting, which cuts the wide coils into strands; that's where a lot of the terminology gets confused. After slitting, stainless steel is formed into a batch of coils that are taken from a parent coil and these coils go by many different names including strip coils, slit coils, strip or simply strip.

The way the coils are wound can cause them to have different names. The most common type is called a "pancake coil," named for the coil's appearance when laid flat. "Tape winding" is another name for this winding method. Another type of winding is "lateral" or "oscillating," also known as "spool winding" or "bobbin" because it looks like a cotton spool, and sometimes they can be physically wound on a plastic spool. Producing coils in this way allows for larger coils, which improves stability and increases yield.