Need help identifying mystey steel plate

Doug W · May 1, 2020

Picked up a good sized piece of 1" steel plate from the remnant yard.
Got it back to the shop to discover the band saw will barely nick it.
Hard and tough, hacksaw basically skips off it.

Abrasion cut off a chunk and went back to the rem yard, they have the billion dollar gun to determine the composition.

These are the numbers that were displayed.
Fe 94%
Si 1.47%
Al 1.24%
Ni 0.81%
Mo 0.32%
Cr 0.31%

From there out I didn't record the other minor elements.

None of that seems to match T1, Hard OX, or the AR steels.
But I never found a source that lists the various grades composition side by side.

Anyone know what this plate might be, or have a good link with the element compositions?

Phil in Montana · May 1, 2020

Heat up your sample and see if you can remove any heat treat....Phil

sfriedberg · May 1, 2020

The high Si is odd. The lack of Mn and C is very odd.

9260 would be a high Si steel, but the spec is noticably lacking in Ni, Cr, and Mo.

The proportions of Ni, Cr and Mo might make it a 47xx or 97xx steel, if you ignore the high Si and Al.

It might be something like 50SiCrMo6 which is intended for springs.

Doug W · May 1, 2020

Well I went back to the rem yard and looked around. My plate had a painted color code on one edge and was able to find others in the yard with the same paint code and marked by hand AR500 and with mill tags marked 500F.

So I assume the mystery plate is AR500F.

Then I took my sample to another place and they were kind enough to zap it with their billion dollar gun (guy said $36K.

Different results and probably an error the 1st time on the Si so high because it looks like it was actually S.
Don't know if he said it wrong or I wrote it down wrong?

I also think the guys reading off the values don't adhere to well to decimal locations.

I did note the guns values change and stabilize the longer it is zapped.

Anyway new values.
Fe 96.27
S 1.69 < guessing that is off a decimal place
Al 1.1
Cu 1.2
Mn 0.97
Zn 0.52
Si 0.443
Cr 0.30

Which pretty closely matches the specs for AR500F from here AR500F Plate | Abrasion-Resistant Formable Plate | Alro Steel
Chemical Composition
Carbon: 0.27%-0.34%
Manganese: 0.35%-0.60% (Max)
Phosphorus: 0.035% (Max)
Sulphur: 0.010% (Max)
Chromium: 0.80%-1.15% (Max)
Molybdenum: 0.15%-0.25% (Max)
Silicon: 0.15%-0.40%
Boron: 0.0005% Min

MattiJ · May 1, 2020

Second set of analysis doesn't make much more sense than the first one.
Sulphur is crazy high, decimal location jumped 2 or 3 times
Al is also high to my eye, AFAIK 0.01% would be more typical
Copper and Zn are also unrealistically high.

atomarc · May 1, 2020

Not trying to be a smart ass, but what would you possibly do with a material you had no idea of what it was. After years of screwing with mystery stuff in my funky little shop I finally started to mark each and every piece so at a later date I would know exactly what I had and how or how not to use it.

Stuart

MattiJ · May 1, 2020

atomarc said:
Not trying to be a smart ass, but what would you possibly do with a material you had no idea of what it was. After years of screwing with mystery stuff in my funky little shop I finally started to mark each and every piece so at a later date I would know exactly what I had and how or how not to use it.

Stuart

Ha!
Guaranteed way to find the piece of AR600 or Hardox Extreme plate is to try to tap the mystery plate

guest · May 1, 2020

Where'd the nickel and moly go? :willy_nilly:

Cole2534 · May 1, 2020

atomarc said:
Not trying to be a smart ass, but what would you possibly do with a material you had no idea of what it was.

Stuart

My friend had this cool trick where he'd pickup some mystery steel and it'd make the teeth on my saw blade disappear.

Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Tapatalk

gbent · May 1, 2020

AR500 is more an end result than a chemical composition. It is 500 brinell and the F means formable. Beyond that it's heavy and it sinks in water.

DDoug · May 1, 2020

gbent said:
AR500 is more an end result than a chemical composition. It is 500 brinell and the F means formable. Beyond that it's heavy and it sinks in water.

...and you can cut it with a plasma cutter...or lance...

Doug W · May 1, 2020

atomarc said:
Not trying to be a smart ass, but what would you possibly do with a material you had no idea of what it was.

Well you have to exercise some judgment.

Most remnant structural steel you would find in these parts is plain old A36 or grade 50 version of that, A992.
It isn't likely you are going to find a channel, WF beam or even plate made of some exotic material.

And I know how low carbon structural steel cuts and machines. And why trying to cut this piece I realized it wasn't A36 or A992.
Therefore I wouldn't fabricate and weld up something out of it treating it as A36 w/o preheat and post heat, load it up and put my neck under it.

But in this case, I planned on using it for some press plates where it would have the same deflection (the controlling criteria for a press plate) no matter what steel it was. And catastrophic failure isn't a possibility in that application.

So A36 or HardOx or AR500 makes no difference in the end use so long as I could cut it to size, which I can't with a band saw.

So instead I will do something else with it like make steel shooting targets, which AR500 is ideal for and have them burned or plasma cut. At 1" thick it won't be getting swiss cheezy.

Lemons to lemonade and all.

Doug W · May 1, 2020

MattiJ said:
Second set of analysis doesn't make much more sense than the first one.
Sulphur is crazy high, decimal location jumped 2 or 3 times
Al is also high to my eye, AFAIK 0.01% would be more typical
Copper and Zn are also unrealistically high.

guest said:
Where'd the nickel and moly go?

They are scrapyard guys, not metallurgists. lol

I have no idea if they calibrate the gun correctly or ever.
They clearly are unfamiliar with the periodical chart, and whether S stands for sulfur, silicone or silly putty but nice enough to give it a go testing it for me.

They mostly use it to grade aluminum and stainless.
Steel is steel to them, all goes in the same boxcar and off to China or wherever.

The 1st guy zapped the rusty sample, on the side I cleaned up, looked at the results and said 'it is steel' LOL

So the values could have been percent, ppm or who knows what.
And Mn could have been interpreted as moly.

Anyway, especially with the color code, tags, resistance to a saw blade, etc,, I am pretty confident it is AR500.

dana gear · May 1, 2020

We paint stick or stamp in two places the type/grade of all steel rems that don't make it to the scrap box and end up back in our storage. I have wondered how many times our local scrap yard may have sold some of our specialty steel drops to the general public.
Our local welding supply company salesmen told me the story of one of his customers ordering a new set of shear blades for his Scotchmen shear after attempting to shear some steel he picked up at the scrap yard. reason he told me the story is his customer showed him the steel he attempted to shear and it had our stamp marking on it. Special heat tool steel.

BT Fabrication · May 5, 2020

My guess, with that plate steel, is it’s a hardened alloy, not really looking like AR with the Mn and Mo. work hardening steel and sulfur to help machine it.
Id guess somewhere in the 8620HR series of steel alloys.

GregSY · May 5, 2020

gbent said:
AR500 is more an end result than a chemical composition. It is 500 brinell and the F means formable. Beyond that it's heavy and it sinks in water.

And what else sinks in water? Witches!

ChipSplitter · May 5, 2020

dana gear said:
We paint stick or stamp in two places the type/grade of all steel rems that don't make it to the scrap box and end up back in our storage. I have wondered how many times our local scrap yard may have sold some of our specialty steel drops to the general public.
Our local welding supply company salesmen told me the story of one of his customers ordering a new set of shear blades for his Scotchmen shear after attempting to shear some steel he picked up at the scrap yard. reason he told me the story is his customer showed him the steel he attempted to shear and it had our stamp marking on it. Special heat tool steel.

I've wondered what happens to all that Hardox, AR500, Armor Plate, etc. that goes to the scrap yard. How many times does it get passed along from "friend" to friend?? :skep:

"Here, you can have this piece of steel. I don't need it anymore"

Bill D · May 5, 2020

GregSY said:
And what else sinks in water? Witches!

Witches do not sink, they pure water refuses them and they float. The good christian girls sink and drown before they get rescued since they might be witches and are forcing themselves to swim under.
Bil lD

Doug W · May 5, 2020

BT Fabrication said:
My guess, with that plate steel, is it’s a hardened alloy, not really looking like AR with the Mn and Mo. work hardening steel and sulfur to help machine it.
Id guess somewhere in the 8620HR series of steel alloys.

I have more confidence in the mill color code, mill tags and paint stick labeling on identically coded plate than I do in the guns results which were then verbally transmitted to me.

As mention up the thread I think that 1st tests value for Mo, actually was for Mn.

Andy_paul · May 6, 2020

The hand held Niton XRF guns don't do that great on light elements. They also have calibrations that may favor certain alloys, thus giving you inaccurate readings on alloys too far out of the calibration range.

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