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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Sensitisation

Sensitisation occurs because Chromium has a higher affinity for Carbon than does Iron. Welding and some heating cycles provide the thermal energy for chromium carbides form in preference and these precipitate within the microstructure. This process causes the steel to become susceptible to corrosion as the matrix areas around the carbide are depleted in Chromium and cannot form the protective oxide film.
Related Terms: Carbide, Inter-granular Corrosion, Sensitised, Stabilised Grades
Sensitised

This describes the condition of a stainless steel that, having been welded or otherwise thermally processed, now has chromium carbide particles present in the grain boundaries. In this condition the steel becomes susceptible to corrosion as the matrix areas around the carbide are depleted in chromium and cannot form the protective oxide film.
Related Terms: Carbide, Inter-granular Corrosion, Sensitisation, Stabilised Grades
Sheared Edges

The cut edges that are produced when a wide sheet or coil is sheared or slit, by rotary cutters or a guillotine, into narrower widths/lengths.
Shearing

The operation of cutting sheet or strip to the required size with a guillotine.
Sinking, Sink Drawing

The cold drawing of a tube without a mandrel in the bore to control bore dimensions. It enables closer tolerances to be achieved on the outside diameter and increases mechanical properties.
Related Terms: Cold Drawing
Skin Passing, Pinch Passing

A cold rolling pass, with minimal reduction of thickness, of annealed sheet or strip. It reduces the tendency to kinks, flats and stretcher strains on subsequent manipulation. Flat material so treated is described as 'skin passed', 'pinch passed', 'non-kinking', 'non-flatting' or 'killed'. The material will also be brighter and have closer tolerances.
Slab

A hot rolled or forged primary feedstock for rolling or forging. The cross-section is rectangular, typically with a width more than twice the thickness.
Slitting

The operation of continuously cutting a wide coil of strip into a narrower strips by rotary cutters. The narrower strips are usually re-coiled after slitting.
Solid Solution

The name given to an alloy, e.g. Iron Chromium, phase which appears, in the microstructure, to be one material. In Iron Chromium solid solutions the Iron is the major constituent and the Chromium, the “alloying element”, atoms occupy places within the iron lattice and modify its properties. Solid solutions are fundamental in metallurgy. Pure metals have definite melting and freezing points, solid solutions have a melting and freezing range.
Solution Treatment, Solution Annealing

A heat treatment process to dissolve precipitated carbides followed by quenching or rapid cooling to retain the carbon into solid solution. This restores the chromium content of the matrix and hence the corrosion resistance.
Related Terms: Inter-granular Corrosion, Sensitisation
Springback, Spring Back

The tendency of a metal work-piece that has been deformed to not stay exactly in the shape to which is has been manipulated, but instead to spring back a little. Stainless steels spring back more than mild/carbon/alloy steels and thus need to be over-bent to a greater degree.
Stabilised Grades

Stainless Steels whose composition has been modified by additions of Titanium or Niobium to overcome sensitisation and its consequent problems. The mechanism is that these elements have a higher affinity for Carbon than does Chromium so their Carbides form in preference. The Chromium content of the matrix is therefore not reduced so it corrosion resistance is retained.

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Metal Glossary

Metal Glossary

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