Stainless Steel vs. Carbon Steel

You can find all the information you desire at: www.matweb.com

303 is austenitic, low hardness, low strengh. 440 is ferritic, a little more robust mechanically, but not that much. Do you have access to the expected mecahnical loads information? Regarding your specific question, any low carbon cold rolled steel would suffice. About additional coating... have you considered electrostatic painting? Really low cost and easy to do, if you have the needed space. Or even conventional painting could be fine- if geometry is not that much intrincate.

This also depends on the part. A washer is far easier to make than a gear.

Environment may influence surface finish.

Hello......................

Are you there????????????????????

corrosion resistance and fabrication, welding, are two important factors to be evaluated...the strength is just one factor to be considered..

S

corrosion & rust prevention

I recieved some quotes back late yesterday and the cost of the parts didnt change as much as expected. One part actually increased in cost. No either the machining source quoted it wrong the first time, or the material cost diffrence wasnt as much as expected. When i told my boss this he asked me why his truck is made from carbon steel and painted rather than stainless steel. If stainless steel is the same cost as carbon steel, then he wants a stainless steel truck!!! They quoted 4140 and 12L14 as replacements for the stainless steel. I have had other vendors suggest 4340 and O1 tool steel. All just as expensive as the stainless steel. Sounds like what i will need to do is go on www.matweb.com and dig somemore into the strengths of materials.

I think your boss is completely wright.-

OH Sure......take his side

Well, forming SS is a bit different than CS.

I am sure this is taken into consideration, Allegheny Ludlum near me did some stainless cars as a promotion and it was darn expensive to form the curves, even back in the day of promoting the SS.

And perchance, weight makes a bit of difference also.

The pix probably came from Hemmings, I am not sure, but I will give them credit.

Notice the ripples in the 38 Ford and the T-Bird.

Would you want to try ans sell that to Mr and Mrs Motoring Public?

I apologize for picking at nits but, that's a '36 Ford, not a '38.

Currently, the price of stainless has fallen and we find ourselves looking at the possibility of 'standardizing' on SS because the combined cost of painting the carbon is about the same. But that's now, and it's atypical. Usually SS is considerably more expensive.

Agreed, typo on my part.