TK Stainless

64 MaGaZine stainless steel
KiTChens are an area where
stainless steel features heavily.
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MaTeriaLs WiTh reDuCeD niCKeL ConTenT as an
aLTernaTiVe For WhiTe GooDs
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Nowadays, stainless steel – including the popular NIROSTA 4301
– is an indispensable material in the white goods and sinks sector.
To play an active part in developments on this market and provide
optimum solutions for customers from the household appliance
industry, experts from ThyssenKrupp Nirosta are constantly
researching into new material generations. With costs for some
alloys increasing dramatically, there is an increasing need for lowcost
alternatives. Even though prices, particularly for nickel, eased
significantly toward the end of the reporting period, ThyssenKrupp
Nirosta has developed new, raw material-efficient materials with
which to actively counter future price fluctuations.
One of them is NIROSTA 4640, which offers the same
good properties as the familiar standard material NIROSTA
4301 but has a lower nickel content. Over the decades, NIROSTA
4301 became established as the optimum combination of price,
processability and anti-corrosion properties. Any change in
composition made the material more expensive or completely
altered its properties. Our developers and technicians have now
come up with a solution to this challenge: NIROSTA 4640. Thanks
to an innovative combination of copper, nitrogen and manganese
together with a high chromium content, it was possible to lower
the nickel content from eight or nine percent to 6.5 percent and
thus reduce production costs. At the same time it offers the same
corrosion resistance, formability, weldability and elegance that
customers have admired in NIROSTA 4301 for so long. These
properties open up a wide range of applications: NIROSTA 4640
can be used in appliances, sinks, commercial kitchens, household
goods, cutlery, interior architecture, claddings, motor vehicles
and chemical processing equipment. “As both materials offer the
same properties, customers changing over to the new material
can retain their optimized processing methods while profiting
from the lower material costs. The new material is exactly what
our customers were looking for, and ThyssenKrupp Nirosta is
the sole supplier,” emphasizes Dr. Gabriele Brückner, head of
materials technology at ThyssenKrupp Nirosta.
Another innovation in the field of austenitic stainless
steels is NIROSTA 4618, which has an even lower nickel content
of just 4.5 percent. NIROSTA 4618 also performs convincingly in
areas that were previously the preserve of the standard material
1.4301: Both display comparable levels of tensile strength, yield
strength and elongation. In the case of NIROSTA 4618 this is
made possible by a significantly higher manganese content
and the addition of copper, providing forming behavior which is
comparable to NIROSTA 4301 in terms of both deep drawing and
stretch forming. Due to its chromium content of 16.5 percent, the
anti-corrosion performance of NIROSTA 4618 does not match that
of NIROSTA 4301. With these properties, NIROSTA 4618 is also an
attractive alternative for household goods, commercial kitchens
and sinks.
“Whether it’s 1.4640 or 1.4618 – with these new developments
ThyssenKrupp Nirosta is meeting rising customer demand
for high-quality, cost-efficient materials,” says Gert Weiß, head
of product service at ThyssenKrupp Nirosta: “For example,
NIROSTA 4640 is a low-cost universal steel which matches the
tried-and-tested NIROSTA 4301 in terms of performance. The
price advantage comes to bear in particular when nickel prices
are high. And NIROSTA 4618 offers similar forming properties to
1.4301 and can replace it in many applications.” ThyssenKrupp
Nirosta has developed the new materials to production maturity,
and they are currently being launched. Successful tests have
already been carried out with leading manufacturers of
dishwashers and sinks. ---