Ed - You bring up an interesting point. I have always noticed that heated 17-7 will corrode much faster than unheated 17-7 which agrees with your point exactly. Why is it that the Cr in the oxide can no longer help the corrosion resistance? What is the technical explanation? I have always...
These are all interesting posts and there is definitely some further testing I need to do. Just to clarify some points: The customer is looking for a consistent color and prefers blues because a competitor of ours seems to be supplying consistently blue colored parts. The customer wants...
I do agree that it may have something to do the oven load. We DID try the purge atmosphere using Nitrogen and that just made the parts look slotchy. That was not exactly what we were looking for. Vacuum is a possibly, but not a capability that we have in house and we would rather try to...
My company works with a lot with 17-7 PH Stainless Steel, Condition CH900 to make various wire products. The wire products are formed as Condition C, degreased, and then heat treated in open air to Condition CH900.
The resulting color of the 17-7 after the heat treatment can vary greatly...
Terry - For my testing, I will make sure I vapor degrease the samples before I start. That way I can eliminate the carbon pickup as a variable. Definitely a good suggestion.
Dr. McGuire - You will never be accused of guessing by me :) We are all guessing at this point what is the issue. I...
Dr. McGuire,
Thank you for the feedback and the insight on which chemical elements may be affecting the material. Like Ed said, 17-7 may have its issues, but for us making edge coiled wave springs out of flat wire, it works really well in the Condition CH900 and is one of the most stable and...
Maui,
That link was very useful. I had seen this NASA document before but needlessly blew it off. Since you focused my attention to it, I sat down and read it yesterday and it is very good compliment to the 17-7 handbook that Ed posted a few days ago. Thanks again...
Terry,
Thank you for the positive feedback on Smalley and sharing the good experience you had with us. We have many engineers (about 20) that work on the sales side of things and they do a good jobs giving the technical assistance that our customers need. I am glad to hear that you have a...
The 17-7 Handbook was a very good read and enlightening in what freedom we have with the Austenite conditioning and Transformation. Since I only had the technical bulletins before now, the information was limited to the optimal temperatures and times, but they never mentioned the reasons behind...
I got the file open. Worked like a charm. Thanks, Ed!
Now I have some light reading for the rest of the morning.
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Ben Moskalik
Smalley Steel Ring Company
An 18 MB .zip should work. Can you Email that to me?
As for sending you samples, I may take you up on that offer :)
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Ben Moskalik
Smalley Steel Ring Company
From what I know, the quenching is achieved by back purging the furnace with Nitrogen. Typically the wire we have is bundled in a coil that is about 26 inched in diameter and then we just take an end piece for physical property testing.
However, this last test I did only used test strips as...
Ed, Yes, I think I have it. Are you just talking about the Armco technical data sheet that is maybe 10 pages long? I have several: one from 1991 and one from some time before that (S-30a). I know it lists the different conditions and heat treats and things like that. Is there something is...
Yes, if you mean the chemistry. The chemistry is well within the AMS and UNS chemical content. I just heard that certain elements could be skewed one way or another to improve results, I just don't know what those elements are. As far as I know, there may even be an unrecorded element that is...
You are right, I should have an actual lab do it to see if we get the same results. Heat treatment vendors are ... well .... interesting to work with.
The chemistry question that I have is based on what I have been told by wire/rod suppliers, but then they won't elaborate on the chemistry that...
Thank you for the reply, Ed.
That is an interesting concept to test the rod direct from the mill, but I am not sure that the results are going to be any different. You are correct in the process that we follow for the anneal, conditioning and transformation. More specifically, every step that...
I have a question about 17-7 PH, condition TH 1050 that has been troubling me for some time.
We manufacture wire products, so any 17-7 we use is in wire form that we coil into shape. When using 17-7 PH, we usually (99.9% of the time) use Condition CH900 which works well for us, but every now...
