Anti-wear special materials

Anti-wear special materials: during the production and manufacturing process of mechanical products, the importance of materials selection is essential to improve the performance of component and of the final product: the goal must always be to find the right compromise, which meets the most particular needs of companies or individuals who need a mechanical component made from a 2D or 3D computerized design.

So, the choice of the most suitable material will involve a careful evaluation by professionals in the field, in order to use the metal alloys that best match the intended use of the mechanical product and that meet fundamental criteria such as quality, durability and safety.

Anti-wear special materials: the importance of choosing the correct material

Choosing the best material for the mechanical product that meets your needs is a task to be carried out with attention: the anti-wear special materials respond very well to most problems.

An optimal approach for the realization of most of the mechanical processes is the choice of special anti-wear special materials, since these are able to guarantee high performance in terms of physical-mechanical characteristics and durability.

The anti-wear special materials do not to wear easily, therefore they react in a better way to atmospheric events, to the natural oxidative process and, compared to select material, even to extreme physical conditions such as using the mechanical product in sea depths.

Among the various possibilities, there are materials that are subjected to different types of wear in a reduced way, namely:

1. adhesive wear: this is the type of wear that causes a rupture by cutting the microscopic roughness of the metallic material;
2. abrasive wear: this occurs when material wear occurs due to contact with the surface of another material, such as scratching, erosion, tearing or grinding;
3. corrosive wear: to be considered particularly dangerous in the case of an oxidized metal surface, since the oxide layer is more easily removed through the sliding contact;
4. wear due to fatigue: this wear is caused by physical effort and by the work that the material does to balance the stress forces to which it is subject.

All these types of wear can be easily reduced with the choice of a special anti-wear material, which is often able to give you the possibility to contrast even more than one wearing condition (which inevitably consumes the mechanical product), one of these materials is the famous Hardox®.

But let’s go into detail and analyze which anti-wear materials can be used and which alloys and metals are on the market.

Hardox®: the universal steel that resists wear and abrasion

The choice of metal sheet affects the success of the finished product: the particular alloy that makes up Hardox® makes it an abrasion-resistant steel and one of the best choices among anti-wear special materials.

Hardox® metal sheets are made of class HB steels: the most used are from HB 400 to HB 700. Hardox® resists wear thanks to its high toughness and excellent physical characteristics of formability and weldability.

This product is one of the best choices for creating mechanical products able to withstand extreme climates and particular environmental conditions with excellent results. Hardox® is also an easily workable material, which can be subjected to operations and processes such as oxyfuel.

The oxyfuel operation is a process that allows you to cut a metal sheet or a mechanical section bar, up to 4 meters long and 400 mm thick, by computerized machines: it is carried out by an oxyacetylene flame and a jet of pure oxygen (based on the chemical principle that iron-containing materials also contain carbon and these, subjected to incandescence, burn in an atmosphere composed of only oxygen).

Going back to Hardox®, this special anti-wear material enhances and maximizes mechanical products performance and it is generally used for construction of containers, demolition tools, excavators, tippers, mining trucks and more.

DUPLEX and SUPERDUPLEX steels: the finest anti-wear materials

Materials science can respond to modern market needs with increasingly efficient and performing alloys: duplex and superduplex.

DUPLEXs are a family of two-phase austenitic-ferritic stainless steels and have a chemical microstructure with crystalline grains of similar size, randomly distributed; from this composition they take the name of DUPLEX.

For the manufacturing of the mechanical product, you can opt for this metal alloy if you need a material that has a high:

• resistance to corrosive wear (even better than 300 series austenitic steels);
• mechanical strength and ductility;
• durability;
• weldability;
• workability.

These properties make DUPLEX among the most used types of stainless steels, especially for the petrochemical industry, where environments are subject to highly corrosive acids and gases; but for marine environments as well.

SUPERDUPLEX steels have improved performance thanks to an increase in chromium, nickel and molybdenum, which improves their characteristics of corrosive anti-wear. Both steel families, DUPLEX and SUPERDUPLEX, can be easily used in mechanical manufacturing processes, such as calendering of metal sheet.

In this specific case, DUPLEX or SUPERDUPLEX steel metal sheet, through calendering process of metal sheet, can be transformed into other objects, such as pipes, metal pipes, tanks or ferrules. The metal transformation process takes place in the calender, where the metal sheets pass through multiple rollers, in order to transform into chosen shapes to meet a specific need.

ICONEL®: wear-resistant material in weatherproof nickel alloy

Anti-wear material with excellent mechanical properties and extremely resistant to corrosion, ICONEL® fits perfectly for manufacturing of mechanical components that must withstand high temperatures and extremely unfavorable environments.

In particular, the nickel alloy ICONEL 625 is one of the ideal choices for mechanical products which must resist high corrosion. This material is generally used for mechanical components in petrochemical, chemical, pharmaceutical and marine sector.

The intrinsic physical-mechanical characteristic of this material makes it suitable for use in marine environments, being subjected to working processes of electrical voltage, polishing, coating or micro-shot peening.

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With materials like ICONEL 625 it is possible to easily carry out processes such as threading, which is a more productive and economic process. With the ICONEL 625 you will be able to create in a very short time taps and dies with high physical-mechanical qualities and anti-wear to corrosion and abrasion. Furthermore, the manufacturing of threading can be carried out on the most classic thread profiles, for rotating and non-rotating mechanical components.

Specialized advice and manufacturing of customized mechanical products

By contacting AG Steel Srl, you can make customized mechanical components.

After evaluation of the design, we can make structures in special materials through CNC machinery and qualified personnel and we are able to perform milling, drilling, boring and turning.

Through mechanical manufacturing with precision CNC, by computerized numerical control, work is optimized and production times are reduced.

In AG Steel Srl, we work special anti-wear special materials such as Duplex, Superduplex, Hardox, Iconel, 904L steel, 321 stainless steel. Contact us now for further information.