Metal Glossary

Designed to be a quick reference guide for customers, the Cashmores glossary provides definitions of the latest metal industry terms.

Metal Glossary

Designed to be a quick reference guide for customers, the Cashmores glossary provides definitions of the latest metal industry terms.

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Guillotining

The cutting of plate, sheet or strip to size or length using guillotine shears. For the guillotining of stainless steels, as compared to mild/carbon steels, the shearing blades need to be sharper and have a reduced clearance.
Heat
Cast, Melt

These terms are used interchangeably for the product of a single melting or refining furnace charge. Occasionally, if the furnace contents are cast into a number of different forms, these may be called separate casts.
Heat Exchanger

A device that facilitates the efficient transfer of heat energy from one fluid to another. The fluids are often kept apart by solid barriers, either the walls of tubes, or the formed sheets of clam shell type heat exchangers. Typically a heat exchanger will have many tubes or clam shells assembled in either bundles or stacks connected by manifolds. One fluid flows outside the assembly whilst the other flows inside.
Hollow, Tube Hollow

Interchangeable terms for a hot finished semi-finished product from either an extrusion or piercing process. They are the feedstock for cold drawing or cold reduced tube production.
Huey Test

A corrosion test for evaluating the inter-granular corrosion resistance of stainless steels by boiling in refluxed 65% nitric acid for five consecutive 48-hour periods, each period starting with fresh acid.
IMA – Improved Machinability Alloy

Enhanced machinability grades that achieve the improved machinability without the addition of elements like Sulphur that have a negative effect of other properties.
Related Terms: Free Machining Stainless Steels
Immunity

In corrosion terms a thermodynamically stable condition. In other words there is no corrosion attack.
Inclusion

Non-metallic particles within the microstructure. Some, sulphides and selenides, are deliberately formed in the metal during its manufacture, others are an inevitable result of melting and casting. Good practice dictates that the second type be kept to minimal levels as they are deleterious.
Related Terms: Free Machining Stainless Steels
Inter-granular Corrosion

Preferential, concentrated, corrosion attack at the grain boundaries. It is highly deleterious and usually caused by the precipitation of carbide particles in the grain boundaries after welding or incorrect thermal processing.
Related Terms: Sensitisation, Sensitised, Weld Decay
Localised Corrosion

A general term for, often high rate, corrosion attack affecting restricted, specific, parts of the surface.
Related Terms: Crevice Corrosion, Pitting Corrosion, Stress Corrosion Cracking
Manipulation Tests

Tests performed on full section or sector specimens to evaluate the ability of the work-piece to withstand possibly severe manipulation. Crush, flare, bend, flare and flange, flatten, reverse flatten, reverse bend and Van Stone flange tests may be used.
Martensite

A non-equilibrium, hard, phase that can exist in some steels. It is formed if a steel with sufficient Carbon content, usually above 0.35 to 0.4%, is heated into the austenite temperature range above 760°C, held at that temperature for a period and then quenched rapidly to room temperature. The Carbon, which is present in the lower temperature ferrite phase as carbides, dissolves in the austenite and, on quenching is trapped in, and strains, the lattice increasing the hardness. This reaction is the mechanism by which all Carbon and most alloy steels are hardened.

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Metal Glossary

Metal Glossary

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