Need to Order Cold-Formed Steel Framing? Start With This Simple Guide

Do you need to order cold-formed steel framing (CFS) for your next project — but aren’t sure where to start? When ordering CFS, you must first be aware of the different types of products and how they’re designated by manufacturers and distributors.

Since a wide variety of CFS member profiles, depths, widths, and material thicknesses exist, the steel framing manufacturing industry developed a standard designator system that all CFS manufacturers and suppliers use. It is important to note that this universal designator system is used in identifying cold-formed steel framing in building codes as well. Understanding the designator system makes it easy to specify the right CFS components — and once you do that, you can then move on to finding the CFS distributor for your project.

The system is alpha-numeric. For example, a CFS member might have the designation 350S162-43. Without knowledge of the designation system, you can’t tell much from that number. Is it a stud? Track? U-channel? What about its thickness and other material dimensions? Once you understand the system, you can identify the member at a glance.

Read more on the BuildSteel website.