11/28/2018 Handbook-Steels Classified

Safety Fusion
Practices Welding
Carbon

OXY-Acet An ASTM steel specification usually covers steel in a particular form (sheet, plate, pipe, tube, forging, casting, etc.).
Welding Braze
& Cutting (For example, ASTM Specification A 210 covers ”Seamless Medium-Carbon Steel Boiler and Superheater Tubes”.) Welding
It may or may not cover chemical composition. When it does not cover composition specifically, the purchaser then
Oxygen specifies composition by reference to SAE or AISI grade. An ASTM specification typically covers such things as
& Welding
test requirements, forming operations, marking, packaging, etc. It may be cross-referenced to several other ASTM Cast Iron
Acetylene
specifications. The system appears complex, but is extremely useful to industry. All ASTM specifications applying
to steel start with the letter ”A”, followed by three digits. The complete specification number also includes two
OXY-Acet Welding
additional digits at the end (as in ”A 210-73” ) which indicate the year in which the specification was issued or
Flame Ferrous
revised. In the 1974 ”Annual Book of ASTM Standards”, steel specifications alone (5 volumes out of a total of 47) Metals
ran to about 3000 pages!
Equipment Welding
For Rimmed vs. Killed Steel Non-Ferrous
OXY-Acet Metals
Some low-carbon steels are available in three grades: ”rimmed”, ”semi- killed”, and ”fully-killed”. The terms
Equipment themselves are derived from the action of the steel when it is poured into an ingot mold after leaving the furnace. In Hard-
Set-Up Surfacing,
terms of welding, they indicate whether or not there is oxygen in the steel which may cause weld porosity when
Operation Building
certain welding processes are used. All carbon steels contain some oxygen. The very nature of the furnaces in
Physical which they are made makes this inevitable. It’s what happens to the oxygen when a weld is made that is
Brazing
Properties significant. When a rimmed steel is welded, some of the oxygen will usually combine with some of the carbon to &
of Metals form bubbles of carbon monoxide (CO). These will cause weld porosity if they cannot escape from the molten weld Soldering
metal before it solidifies. In oxy-acetylene welding, these minute bubbles of gas always have time to escape. In
Mechanical some other processes, such as tig welding (GTAW), however, they may be trapped in the solidified metal. To make Heating
Properties & Heat
of Metals a killed steel, aluminum (which has a stronger affinity for oxygen than carbon, manganese, or silicon) is added to
Treating
the molten steel before it is poured. The aluminum locks up the oxygen, in the form of aluminum oxide, so that it
Structure cannot form gas bubbles during welding. In a semi-killed steel, silicon may have been used, with or without
of aluminum, as a deoxidizing addition, and there may be some bubbles of carbon monoxide gas formed during Manual
Steel welding. Cutting

How Steels Oxygen

Are Cutting By
Classified Machine

Expansion Testing
& &
Contraction Inspecting

Prep 4
For
Appendices
Welding

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