The amount of appliances in our daily lives that come from metal fabrication is massive, including tools, electronic appliances, cars, phones, and so on. Metal fabrication is a massively complicated process that has many different variations, each of those suitable for a specific goal.
We would go to each and every one of them, but first, we have to explain the basics of metal fabrication as a whole – as well as a few words about different metals used in fabrication.
HARD AND SOFT METALS
Metals themselves can be separated into two large categories – hard metals and soft metals. Each category has a share of advantages and a number of issues.
HARD METALS
Hard metals are stainless steel, chrome, steel, Inconel, and titanium. Each of these can be created during the smelting process by adding a small percentage of other elements to the alloy. Adding molybdenum and chromium creates 4140 steel alloy, which is great for aircraft creation and similar use cases, while carbon and manganese create tough 1018 steel. Both of these metal types are easy to weld but are susceptible to rusting if there is no additional finishing on the metal piece.
A combination of nickel and chromium creates 300-series stainless steel which is rather tough when it comes to machining but also makes a great resource for food equipment, medical instruments, pressure vessels, and so on. It also cannot be hardened the way carbon steel does. Another metal variation is 17-4 PH, which is a rather tough material that adds copper, chromium, and nickel to the alloy, creating a material that is technically stainless steel but has the machineability of a superalloy, capable of achieving great results in both tensile strength and hardness when treated with heat. It is a good choice for nuclear and aerospace industries, as well as any other industry that requires high corrosion resistance and incredibly high material strength.
There are also materials suitable for only extreme circumstances, such as Inconel – a material that uses over 50% of nickel in its alloy, often used for jet engine combustion chambers, gas turbine blades, and nuclear reactors due to its excellent capabilities with a high range of operable temperatures. Another similar alloy is cobalt chrome – the one that uses cobalt in the alloy, creating a material with massive wear resistance and also, surprisingly enough, biocompatibility with humans. This last reason is why cobalt chrome is often used for knee/hip replacements, dental implants, arterial stents, etc.
The last, but not the least material on this list is titanium, which is twice as strong as mild steel while being half of its weight. It is created via aluminum and vanadium, generating a corrosion-resistant and strung material that is also biocompatible – making it suitable for bone screws, plates, pins, etc. This strength-to-weight ratio is one of the reasons why titanium is so appealing to high-performance vehicle manufacturers and the aerospace industry, as a whole.
