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Steel

Materials

What have we used Steel for?

Automotive bumpers

Automotive chassis

Tubular structures

Crash barriers

Fabrications

Brackets

Guards

An Introduction to Steel

Sheet metal work is often associated with the use of a widely used metal, steel. We use new technologies and traditional skills to work in a multitude of ways to manipulate this material.

Steel is the development of an alloy of iron and carbon known for its adaptability and tensile strength and will often have other materials added to it to change its properties to suit a required purpose. Steel has many uses if not in its raw form then as a coated or painted material. Steel comes in any number of grades but there will be a flexible workable material to suit most requirements.

The production and alloys used to make the steel change the carbon content and by doing so change the properties of the steel. Spheroidising, annealing, normalising, quenching. Martempering ,tempering and austempering all go to define the properties of the steel.

High-tensile steels are low-carbon, or steels at the lower end of the medium-carbon range, which have additional alloying ingredients in order to increase their strength, wear properties or specifically tensile strength. These alloying ingredients include chromium, molybdenum, silicon, manganese, nickel and vanadium. Impurities such as phosphorus or sulphur have their maximum allowable content restricted.

Case hardening, is a process that hardens only the exterior of the steel part, creating a hard, wear resistant skin (the "case") but preserving a tough and ductile interior. Carbon steels are not very hardenable meaning they cannot be hardened throughout thick sections. Alloy steels have a better hardenability, so they can be through-hardened and do not require case hardening. This property of carbon steel can be beneficial, because it gives the surface good wear characteristics but leaves the core tough.

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