What is steel made of?
Steel is not just an alloy of iron andcarbon, thanks to its amazing strength - is, first and foremost, the basis of industry today. Steel, as one of the richest resources in the world, turns into a reliable building block. An indispensable component of such an iron alloy is carbon. The more carbon in the composition, the metal becomes harder and less plastic, in steel, the carbon percentage barely exceeds two, which means that steel can be forged and stamping. About what the process of hardening steel you will learn from our article How to harden steel.
The production of pig iron and steel is the most importantthe use of iron, but if the steel is ductile, iron - an alloy of metals with a carbon content of more than 2% - is hard and brittle, and therefore does not lend itself to forging.
The production of steel is a complex chemical process. Steel is made from iron ore or from metal scrap at special plants, in this case scrap is utilized.
In the composition of steel, in addition to various impurities(for example: manganese, nickel, silicon, copper, chromium) contains oxygen, which during production is added to the molten steel to reduce the oxygen content in the alloy, which will subsequently ensure greater plasticity of the product. The content of the above impurities in steel classifies the metal alloy in terms of quality:
- quality steel;
- steel of ordinary quality;
- high-quality steel;
- especially high-grade steel.
The use of steel in our modern life is very multifaceted and ubiquitous, at times we do not even notice that without this alloy the majority of designs and mechanisms do not do.
