Types of Steel

                                                                                                                                                               

01. Manganese steel

Manganese is used in steel to produce a clean metal.

Properties of manganese steel:

• It increases hardenability and strength.
• It also adds to the strength of the metal and helps in heat treating.
• Lower both ductility and weldability if present in high percentage with high carbon content in steel.
• Very durable.

In manganese steel include 1.65 – 2.10 % of manganese. Some times an excess of manganese is used for hard steel as manganese is a carbide forming element.

austenitic manganese steel - a steel with a relatively large component (10-14%) of manganese; highly resistant to wear and shock. Used to prepare car wheels, dredger buckets, jaws of rock cutting machines.

02. Silicon steel:

Silicon is often used to increase the resiliency of steel for making springs. It increases the strength properties especially elastic limit without loss of ductility. Silicon is an important alloying element (0.2 - 0.7%) in certain high-yield point structural steels. If silicon exceeds 0.60-2.2%, product is classed as alloy steel. Increasing silicon increases resiliency of steel for spring applications. Spring raises the critical temperature for heat treatment. Increasing silicon content promotes susceptibility of steel to decrease. It is used for magnetic circuits in electrical equipments. It is used in spring steels which contain 2% silicon, 0.2% manganese and 0.6 % carbon. It is the principal deoxidizing used in steel making.

Properties of silicon steel;

• Improves oxidation resistance
• Strengthens low alloy steels
• Acts as a deoxidizer

Rimmed and capped steels contains no significant amount of silicon. Semi killed steel may contain a moderate amount of silicon. Fully killed steels may contain various amounts of silicon up to 0.30% maximum. It is less effective than manganese in increasing strength and hardness. In low-carbon steels, it is usually detrimental to surface quality.

03. Molybdenum steel:

molybdenum containing 10-15% molybdenum;

• Adds toughness and higher strengths to steel.
• Promotes hardenability of steel
• Makes steel fine grained
• Makes steel usually tough at various hardness levels
• Counteracts tendency towards temper brittleness.
• Raises tensile and creep strength at high temperatures.
• Enhances corrosion resistance in stainless steels.
• Forms abrasion resisting particles.
• It increases dynamic and high temperature characteristics.
• It is resistant to tempering and maintain their strength at elevated temperature.
• They have good creep resistance.
• a very hard heat-resistant steel.

It is used for making high speed steels. It forms stable carbides resulting in fine grain size.

04. Nickel steel:

• Increases strength and toughness.
• Helps to resist corrosion.
• Improves shock resistance
• It counteracts brittleness which develops in most pearlitic steels at subnormal temperature.
• It lowers the critical temperature of steel and widen the temperature range for successful heat treatment.
• Strengthens steels
• Renders high chromium iron alloys austenitic
• Lessens distortion in quenching.

Mostly 2-5% of nickel combined with other alloying elements produce toughness.

Used to prepare guns, long span bridges, axles bearings etc.

05. Vanadium steel:

• It gives steel a fine-grained structure and increase its toughness.
• It is often used in tool steels because of its increased resistance to impact.
• Increases hardenability
• Imparts strength and toughness to heat-treated steel
• Causes marked secondary hardening

It is used with chromium to make chrome-vanadium steel from which transmission parts and gears are manufactured. This type of steel is very strong and has excellent shock resistance. Less than 0.2% is used normally with 0.5 to 1.5% of chromium.

Used to prepare axles, springs, forgings, engine, frames etc.

06. Chromium steel:

• It provides corrosion resistance.
• Increase hardenability or the depth to which steel can be hardened
• Adds hardness, toughness and resistance to wear.

Gears and axles are often made of chrome-nickel steel because of its strength. Chromium less than 0.2% can be effective in increasing hardenability.

Used to prepare blades,chisels, files, bearing balls etc.

07. Niobium steel:

• Greatly increases tensile strength of steel. Only 40 lb of niobium per ton of steel will increase the tensile strength by 10,000 to 15000 lb/in².

08. Tungsten steel:

Tungsten is used in the form of tungsten carbide

• Gives steel high hardness even at red heats.
• Promotes fine grains
• Resists heat
• Promote strength at elevated temperatures

It is used with chromium, vanadium, molybdenum, or manganese to produce high speed steel used in cutting tools. Tungsten steel is said to be "red-hard" or hard enough to cut after it becomes red-hot.

Used to prepare cutting tools, rails etc.

09. Titanium steel:

Titanium is a very strong, very lightweight metal that can be used alone or alloyed with steels. It is added to steel to give them high strength at high temperatures. Modern jet engines used titanium steels.

• It prevents localized depletion of chromium in stainless steels during long heating
• Prevents formation of austenite in high chromium steels
• Reduces martensitic hardness and hardenability in medium chromium steels.

10. Copper steel:

• It is used in percentage of 0.1 - 0.4 to produce resistance to atmospheric corrosion.
• Acts as a strengthening agent.

Although copper is corrosion-resistant, it is not used in steel for this purpose. Copper is nowadays, used extensively in low-carbon sheets especially thin gauges and other structural steels. It has minor effect on mechanical properties. It is beneficial to corrosion resistance if amount present exceeds 0.20%. When present in appreciable amounts, it is detrimental to hot working operations. It effects forge welding and is detrimental to surface quality. It does not effect arc or acetylene welding.

11. Cobalt steel:

Contains 35% cobalt.

• Improves mechanical properties such as tensile strengths, fatigue strength and hardness.
• Refines the graphite and pearlite
• It is a mild stabilizer of carbides
• Improves heat resistance
• Retards the transformation of austenite and thus increases hardenability and freedom from cracking and distortion.
• Contributes to red-hardness by hardening ferrite

12. Boron steel:

• It is a very powerful hardenability agent and increases hardenability or depth to which steel will harden when quenched.

It is being 250-750 times as effective as nickel, 75- 125 times more effective than molybdenum and about 100 times as powerful as chromium. It is expensive but used in minute quantitie

13. Deoxidize steel:

Use aluminum to alloy deoxidize steel:

• Produces fine grain size.
• It is used to obtain non-aging characteristics alone or in the presence of other elements
• Prevents recurrence of strains in sheets and strip.

14. Carbon Steels

Carbon steel is hard and elastic. it is medium carbons steel or high carbon (tool) steel.

Steel, are the softest and usually the cheapest of the seven types we offer. Many woodworking tools are made from this material. Many craftsmen like Carbon Steel because the tools are soft enough to sharpen with a file. Virtually any woodworking tool can be found in a carbon steel version. If you are cutting softwood or just a few holes in hardwoods or plastics, Carbon Steel is your answer. If you have a lot of holes to cut in a hard material, you may want to choose a better grade of steel. The tools we manufacture

from Carbon Steel are heat treated to 62c hardness and cannot be sharpened with a file. A stone type of grinding wheel is required to resharpen them.

15. Stainless Steel

Stainless steel is not normally used to manufacture tools. However, we have found that heat-treating Stainless Steel produces tools that not only have longer lasting cutting edges than Carbon Steel but also have a spring steel quality that keeps the tools from breaking in tough applications. It contains 18% of chromium and 8% of nickel. Stainless Steel generally costs only a little more than Carbon Steel. Our Stainless Steel is heat treated to 45c hardness and can be sharpened with a file or a stone type of grinding wheel.

16. High Speed Steel:

sometimes abbreviated to HSS, comes in various different grades generally used in the metalworking industry to make drills, end mills, turning tools, and other tools designed specifically to cut metal. In woods and plastics, all grades of HSS far outlast the

cheaper Carbon Steel or Stainless Steel. Very few woodworking tools are made from HSS. It is too expensive to use for large tools, very tough to machine and can be subject to breakage with rough treatment in hand held equipment. M1 is the hardest and also the most brittle of the bunch. Tools made of High Speed Steel will always have HS or HSS stamped or etched on them. Hss contains 18% tungsten, 4% chromium, 1% vanadium and 0.6% carbon.

17. Carbide Tipped steel:

is the material of choice for tools used in high production applications. The Carbide is super hard, resharpenable and replaceable. Carbide can cut faster at higher spindle speeds because it is impervious to the heat produced by those speeds. Since Carbide is extremely hard, it is also extremely brittle. This is especially true in the case of woodworking tools. The slightest contact with another metal object could cause the Carbide to chip. Although some grades of Carbide are designed to work well in metals and cement, the type found on woodworking tools in not. The Carbide Tips are usually brazed to the cutting edges of tools made of softer materials like Carbon Steel. Sharpening Carbide Tipped tools requires Diamond plated grinding wheels.

18. Solid Carbide steel:

Solid carbide steel tools are very expensive and are usually manufactured and used for special applications. Tools that are made from Solid Carbide usually have some type of spiral design or they are very small like Solid Carbide Spiral Router Bits and Solid Carbide Drill Bits. These types of tools are best sharpened by the original manufacturer.