Carbon Steels and Alloy Steels

Carbon steels and alloy steels are ferrous alloys that contain carbon and other alloying elements such as manganese, chromium, molybdenum, and nickel. They are used in a wide variety of industrial applications. Many materials meet the compositional standards of the Unified Numbering System (UNS), a specification established by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), and metal trade associations such as the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and the Aluminum Association (AA). The UNS assigns metals and alloys a lettered prefix and a five-digit number. For example, carbon steels and alloy steels belong to the UNS G category and have designations such as UNS G10950. AISI-SAE is another common specification. Other standards include European Norm (EN) and U.S. military specifications (MIL-SPEC). QQ and QQS prefixes are used to designate specific MIL-SPEC metals.  

Carbon steels and alloy steels vary in terms of alloying elements, strength, and durability. Plain carbon steels include both soft, non-hardenable, low carbon products and hardenable, high carbon steels. Most low carbon or mild steels can be fabricated by machining, forming, casting, and welding. Typically, carbon steels contain manganese or aluminum as alloying elements. By contrast, alloy steels contain chromium, molybdenum, vanadium, and nickel. Like plain carbon steels, alloy steels are based on iron and contain significant amounts of carbon. Common alloy steels include hardenable high alloy steels, high strength low alloy (HSLA) steels, maraging steels and specialty steel alloys. Commercially pure, unalloyed or very low alloy metals are free of or contain very small amounts of alloying elements such as copper, commercially pure titanium or palladium-modified titanium, or pure aluminum grades from the AA 10nn Series (e.g., AA 1000 to 1999).

Suppliers provide carbon steels and alloy steels in many stock shapes and forms. Semi-finished stock shapes are suitable for part fabrication. They are also used as feedstock for casting, forging, spinning and other forming processes. Common stock shapes and forms for carbon steels and alloy steels include bars, rods, tubes, plates, strips, shims, spheres, foil, wire, billets, slabs, and blooms. Materials are also supplied as ingots, powders, fillers, and reinforcements. There are two basic types of anodes. Plating anodes are in used in plating or electroplating processes. Sacrificial anodes are used to protect steel or other metal structures from corrosion. Coil stock is supplied on reels or other wound stock forms. Hollow stock such as tubes and pipes has an open internal bore. 

Selecting carbon steels and alloy steels requires an analysis of dimensions, production processes, and features. Outer diameter (OD), inner diameter (ID) overall length, and overall thickness are important dimensions. Most materials are cast, wrought, extruded, forged, cold-finished, hot-rolled, or formed by compacting powdered metals or alloys. Some carbon steels and alloy steels are modified with boron or free of lead and selenium. Others are heat, corrosion, wear, shock, or impact resistant. Electric arc furnaces are used to produce very clean metals and alloys with fewer inclusions and lower variability.

• Alloy Steel
  Steels that contain specified amounts of alloying elements -- other than carbon and the commonly accepted amounts of manganese, copper, silicon, sulfur, and phosphorus -- are known as alloy steels....
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• Tool Steel & Tool Steel Supplier
  As the name implies, tool steel refers to a number of different high speed, carbon, and alloy steels that are used to make tools. Desirable features in tool steel include toughness, wear resistance,...
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• HSLA Steel
  Those steel alloys known as high-strength low-alloy (HSLA) steels provide increased strength-to-weight ratios over conventional low-carbon steels for only a modest price premium. Because HSLA alloys...
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