24/06/2026
A buyer messaged us.
"Rods keep cracking mid-production. Rejection rates up. Tooling's breaking. Supplier has no answer."
Classic.
We asked for photos. Had the diagnosis in 10 minutes.
Dezincification.
Brass loses zinc when the billet temperature isn't controlled during extrusion — or when the alloy was off-spec to begin with. What's left looks like brass. Machines like chalk.
The cracks weren't from his shop floor. They were already there — baked in before the material left the supplier's warehouse.
His supplier was shipping the problem. Consistently. On time.
What did:
— Spectrometer check on our stock. Alloy composition verified against spec before a single rod went to the machine.
— First-off samples sent. Customer approved before full production commitment.
— Zero rejections since.
The machine wasn't the problem.
The tooling wasn't the problem.
The rod was always the problem.
Wrong material is expensive.
Finding out three batches late is more expensive.
If your rejection rates are climbing and nobody's giving you a straight answer — maybe it's time to ask a different supplier.