64 MaGaZine stainless steel KiTChens are an area where stainless steel features heavily. --- MaTeriaLs WiTh reDuCeD niCKeL ConTenT as an aLTernaTiVe For WhiTe GooDs --- 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. ---
stainless steel neW MaTeriaLs from thyssenkrupp nirosta provide attractive alternatives to customers from the white goods sector. --- MaGaZine 65