Salt Contamination of Steel before Heating 1

[mewhg]

I have a question about road salt contamination of 5160 alloy bar. The bar in question was transported un-tarped and was contaminated with road salt.

During processing the bar is austenized, formed, quenched in oil then tempered to 46 HRC to make a spring.

Do you think the road salt could detrimentally effect the spring in fatigue? Would it be worth washing it off?

If spring steel is quenched in molten salt for a bainite microstructure I would imagine this would be similar......and from what I understand the salt does not have to be washed off......

TIA

 

[gr2vessels]

I use to wash the tomatoes I bought before eating them. Do you do the same? I guess the same principle applies to my 5160 alloy bars.
cheers,
gr2vessels

 

[mewhg]

A stunningly erudite reply, gr2vessels, thank you for you wisdom.

 

[swall]

I would reject the material back to the supplier.

 

[metengr]

I would agree with swall if the shipment requirements were not followed. In this case, if there were no shipping requirements, rejecting the shipment may cost you significant dollars because you (the purchaser) did not specify requirements for shipping.

If your management places you between a rock and hardplace, I would offer the following as a possible out for you; have the spring steel shipment thoroughly cleaned and subjected to a detailed visual inspection, as a minimum, followed by a wet fluorescent MT if areas of surface pitting is detected. Road salt on this heat treated spring material may cause corrosion pitting attack on the surface, and I would at least want to know what the surface condition is before accepting it for use in a spring application. The cleaning cost and any supplemental NDT are small in comparison to problems in service.

 

[mewhg]

Thanks metengr.....

We are talking 300 ton of steel so yes the NDT is a small part of the cost of the steel