Three Things You Didn’t Know About Combined Metals

Alloys or combined metals have existed since the dawn of time and alloys have been used in a variety of fashions and industries. The fascination with alloys goes all the way back to the study of Alchemy. Turning Lead into Gold was one of the aims of Alchemy with many trying to achieve this through experiments and other ways. Here are some interesting facts about combined metals that you may not know of.

I. Stainless Steel

Stainless Steel is one of the most popular alloys around and the one that you may be most familiar with. Stainless Steel is used in sinks, piping, and other uses in homes, businesses, and elsewhere. The main attraction to stainless steel lies within its rust-proof capabilities which make it ideal for rainy climates or other environments which may introduce water and condensation to the mix.

What makes up stainless steel? A mix of mostly iron and low levels of chromium and carbon. The surface of the steel has a thin layer of chromium oxide which forms its shield against rust. Rust can form when oxygen is introduced into the steel surface through water and air. Interestingly, stainless steel is not completely rust-proof as seawater (which is corrosive due to the levels of salt within) can eat away at the chromium oxide and penetrate the steel’s surface causing it to rust.

II. Gold

Gold is another combined metal that is quite familiar to most of us as gold is used most in jewelry. Gold has fantastic reactive qualities with other metals and alloys which is why it’s sometimes used in audio connections and high-fidelity compact discs. You may see the gold listed under a karat number, this number defines how much gold makes up the alloy.

Karat is listed in 24 parts, so for 24-karat gold, this means that the item is 100% gold with no other metals included. 18-karat gold would be 18/24’ths gold or put into percentage terms, 75% gold and 25% other metals.

III. Solder

Solder is a special alloy comprised of tin and lead and has excellent bonding qualities with other metals. This quality of metal bonding is precisely why computer manufacturers use solder to mate chips, resistors, and capacitors to logic boards inside your computer. The solder provides a solid pathway for the data from these chips to traverse through trace lines within the logic board to other chips.

There are no experiments and dream chasing these days with alloys as the combined metal forging industry has grown steadily over the years. This growth of the sheet metal market looks to continue with an average growth rate slightly above four percent between 2018 and 2022. The continued growth of this market means that combined metals will be important to the industry for years to come, and knowing more about the common alloys mentioned about will be helpful for growing with the industry.

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