Steel for Motor Car Use.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 5, 1 March 1906, Page 107

Steel for Motor Car Use.

Among the improvements gradually being introduced in the higher priced cars, the most important, but the most difficult to see, are improvements in the quality of the metal employed. Already the demand for the highest possible class of shockresisting material which modern automobilism has

created has produced a considerable effect on the manufacture of the higher grades of steel. Some idea of the importance of the motoring industry to the up-to-date steel maker can be gathered from the paper read by Dr. Leon Guillett on " Steel Used for Motor Car Construction in, France " at last year's meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute (Eng.). The chief steels used are nickel steels, chrome steels, silicon steels, chrome-nickel steels, and steels of mysterious composition. The use of steels with a low content of both carbon and nickel has become general in the motor-car industry, but when it is desirable to avoid the operations of case-hardening and quenching a steel containing 7 per cent, of nickel and 0.12 per cent, of carbon may be used. Steels with a low nickel content (1( 1 to 6 per cc - 1. ) and a medium percentage of carbon (0.25 to 0.4) are employed chiefly for shafts, forgmgs, axle- journals, axles, bearingsand various sections. The use of steels containing from 10 to 30 per cent, of nickel has been abandoned, but those containing from 32 to 36 per cent, with 0.12 to 0.2 per cent, of carbon have an important application m making valves. Chrome steels are employed for bearings, and silicon steels for springs and gearing. Tungsten steels might serve the same purpose, but they would be more expensive. Chrome nickel steels come in for use in shafts and journals (with C 0.25—0.45, Ni s— 6,Cr. 0.5 — 1.0 per cent.), and for axles and for valves (with C 0.55 — 0.75, Ni 21 — 23, Cr. 1.5 — 2.5 per cent.). Then there is the new " UY," with remarkable properties and mysterious composition, which is being used for crank shafts and gearing.