Historical development of carbon steel.

As early as in ancient times, humans began to use carbon-containing iron products, but the refining technology at that time was relatively primitive, and the carbon content and performance were difficult to accurately control.

In 1740, B. Huntsman of the United Kingdom melted steel in a crucible to obtain high-carbon steel (C0.75%-1.5%) with uniform composition, and made cutting tools, but the cutting speed did not exceed 5m/min. In 1868,“Mushet”self-hardening steel was developed, and the cutting speed of low-carbon steel reached 8m/min, but it had disadvantages such as difficulty in annealing and softening, high hot brittleness, poor forgeability, and easy overheating during quenching.

In 1898, F.W.Taylor of the United States and M.White of the United Kingdom developed a new type of Cr-W steel (C1.44%, Cr1.83%, W7.72%), and adopted a high-temperature quenching heat treatment process close to the melting temperature to obtain good cutting performance, which increased the cutting speed of medium carbon steel to 18m/min. They also performed a cutting demonstration at the Paris Exposition in 1900, which is also regarded as the first year of the birth of high-speed steel. Since then, based on Cr-W high-speed steel, alloying schemes have been continuously improved, and a series of new high-speed steel grades have been developed, such as W18Cr4V established in 1910, which can reach a speed of 30m/min when cutting medium carbon steel; 12%-15% Co was added in 1923, and the cutting speed exceeded 40m/min; W-Mo steel M2 in 1937; from 1958 to 1963, the United States invented super-hard high-speed steel M41 and M42 with a hardness of 70HRC. In 1965, Crucible Steels of the United States successfully prepared high-speed steel using powder metallurgy, breaking through the limitations of carbon and alloy content in traditional steel metallurgical production processes, and greatly improving the performance of high-speed steel. Subsequently, new steel grades such as high-carbon and high-vanadium steel, sulfur-added free-cutting high-speed steel, and titanium nitride coated high-speed steel also appeared one after another.

Carbon steel development

In modern times, the production technology of carbon steel continues to improve. By precisely controlling the carbon content and adding other alloying elements, its performance is continuously optimized and its application areas are becoming more extensive. It plays an important role in industries such as construction, machinery manufacturing, automobiles, and aerospace. At the same time, the research on carbon steel is also continuing to deepen, and we are committed to developing carbon steel materials with better performance and better ability to meet various special needs.