Carbon Steel
Carbon Steel Forged Parts
Carbon Steels are among the most widely used metals for open die forgings. Forging improves their impact strength, ductility, fatigue strength, and toughness, while carbon content and heat treatment control hardness and strength. Forging breaks up segregation, reduces porosity, and helps homogenization. It produces a fibrous grain structure, which improves mechanical properties parallel to the grain flow. It also reduces grain size.
Carbon steel contains from 0.06% carbon to 2.0% carbon, although the vast majority of grades contain up to 1.0% carbon. The carbon range results in a very broad range of mechanical properties, and an accompanying number of end uses for forged parts, including moving parts in machinery, shapes for heavy equipment, and structural components that require resistance to wear or impact. Suitable heat treatment of carbon steels will improve their machinability, hence their use for intricate shapes. Carbon steel is suitable for many end uses in many environments, but its heat and corrosion resistance are limited.
Common specifications for carbon steel include:
ASTM A668 Classes A-F (Classes G-N are alloy steels), AISI, AMS, API, UNS and other industry standard specifications depending upon the shape of the carbon steel for its end use.
Machinability is important, and in fact the lower carbon grades show very good machinability in the as-forged condition, hence no heat treatment for machinability purposes will be necessary for grades 1008, 1015, 1018, and 1020. Higher carbon steels, such as 1025, 1030, and 1045, will be heat treated by such processes as normalizing, annealing, quenching, or hardening and tempering, to provide their requisite mechanical properties. Yield and tensile strength, ductility, impact strength, and fatigue strength, are the important parameters of carbon steels that make them suitable for their numerous applications. They are suitable to a point for resistance to heat and corrosion, but a change to alloy steels or martensitic stainless steels is recommended to ensure better results in such applications.
The mechanical properties of carbon steels are a function of their carbon content and their heat treatment. Forging, as defined by material compression, is also important for its effect on mechanical properties. For a given carbon content, the required strength, ductility, toughness, and fatigue strength, may be obtained by forging and heat treatment. The higher the carbon content, the higher the strength and hardness, and the range of carbon content and heat treatment available allows steels to meet hardness, strength, toughness and wear resistance specifications. The properties of carbon steel make it an excellent choice for finished parts machined from round, flat, square and hex bars, blocks and rectangles, discs and rings, cylinders, or shapes with steps, flanges, or complex finish machining requirements.
Carbon steel is not recommended for use in corrosive environments or high temperatures, but it can withstand 1200ºF (650ºC) in some oil and gas pipeline applications. The strength of carbon steel increases as temperature is reduced although the metal becomes brittle at negative 20F (-28.9C) risking fracture when subjected to impact loading.
These relatively simple alloys, when formed and subjected to various heat treatments, play a significant part in the overall concept of engineering and end use applications.
All Metals & Forge Group takes great pride in maintaining one of the most stringent ISO9001, AS9100 quality systems in the open die forging and seamless rolled ring industry. It begins with taking a customer’s end use, required forged surface condition, mechanical properties of the specified alloy, forged shape, heat treatment, delivery need, and competitive price. All this is coupled with forging soundness proven by ultrasonic testing, and care in packing goods to arrive in pristine condition at the customer’s desired location. Every step is monitored by the quality system at AMFG and continuously improved.
AMFG performs rough machining to within 3mm of finished dimensions to reduce the CNC cost at the customer’s machine shop for all the forged shapes the company produces. The rough machined surface condition is 250 RMS so that proper quality testing can be performed on each part – the AMFG standard.
AMFG can perform finish machining to within .001 of an inch for final tolerance and 64 or 32 RMS surface finish. This level of quality and precision is unique in an industry where other suppliers’ parts are often delivered black, as forged, or with a rough machined surface of 500 RMS, without the internal or external steps and dimensions to reduce machining costs.
From inquiry to invoice, All Metals & Forge Group quality is managed and not assumed. Whether the need is for one part, an entire project, or a production run, AMFG delivers.
U.S. 1 (973) 276-5000 • 1 (800) 600-9290 • Canada 1 (416) 363-2244
Fax: 1 (973) 276-5050 • Sales@Steelforge.com
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In the U.S. 1 (973) 276-5000 / 1 (800) 600-9290.
In Canada 1 (416) 363-2244.
Email us at sales@steelforge.com.
