You will learn more about the standard types, sizes, and grades in this quick guide to steel plates, and the importance of selecting a quality supplier.
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A-36 a structural carbon steel plate used for general purposes - lightweight structures and equipment. Weldable, formable, with good strength levels. (Minimum yield point of 36,000# psi (*see information at the end of this post about yield).
A572-50 a low alloy plate with a good combination of strength and weldability. Minimum yield point of 50,000# psi. (* see information at the end of this post about yield).
AR400 abrasion resistant plate - medium carbon, high strength steel designed to a minimum hardness of 360 Brinell (*see information at the end of this post about Brinell). It offers an exceptional amount of sliding and impact resistance. AR400 is the most popular type of abrasion resistant plate.
Three main types are available in a various degree of hardness - AR235 (medium carbon manganese steel with moderate hardness of 212 to 255 Brinell, AR400 (minimum hardness of 360 Brinell), AR500 (specially designed to reach an amazing nominal hardness of 500 Brinell. Built in strength and superior through hardness gives 500 exceptional resistances to both impact and sliding).
T1 quenched and tempered high strength alloy steel with a yield strength nearly 3x that of A36. This material offers high strength plus good workability and weldability with minimum pre-heating. Exceptional toughness at low atmospheric temperatures (to -50F).
A general quick guide for selecting steel plates is:
A36 general purpose carbon steel plate.
Applications: Structural application for welded, bolted, and riveted buildings, bridges, and general fabrication structures and equipment.
A572-50 slightly stronger low alloy plate, which is a good strength to price ratio.
Applications: Bridges, buildings, construction equipment, freight cars, machinery, truck parts.
T1 very strong alloy plate.
Applications: Used extensively for component parts and liners for construction equipment, mining machinery, truck bodies, and chutes. Fabricated bridge, tower and building members, components such as frames, bases, supports, and base or body plates for earthmoving or transport equipment, booms, dipper sticks, and bucket parts for power shovels or cranes.
AR400 Good for sliding and impact resistance.
Applications: Liner in material handling equipment such as grains, coal, cement, sand, gravel, and earth. Frames, chutes, buckets, hoppers, conveyors, mining, and agricultural implements.
A36, A572 and T1 are mainly available in 8’x20’ plates
AR400 typically comes in 8’x24’ and sometimes 8’x20’ plates
It’s important to select a quality supplier when ordering steel plates for your applications. A knowledgeable supplier can keep your projects moving forward by understanding your applications, timelines, and requirements. They will offer a collaborative onsite visit to help you make the right steel plate selection.
Double check to make sure your supplier can process the steel plate and cut it to size. Ask if they can cut it into shapes like rectangles, squares, circles, donuts, sketches and make sure they can do holes and slots on the interior.
Ask for an onsite visit. Have your sketches or parts available. Ask for a sample of the product to ensure it meets your quality standards. A good supplier will ask questions and pay attention to details like tolerances, packaging, deburring, and marking plates with part numbers to reduce rejects and errors.
For more information, please visit Cold-Rolled Steel Plate.
Will they offer some guidance on the options of different plate grades available? This is hugely important if you’re not sure which grade to select that’s right for your application.
Is their ordering process easy and hassle free? Is their communication transparent and honest?
Lastly, check up on their lead-times. Will they work with you to process the plate within your time frame? Will they offer partial shipments to keep you going?
It's important to find the right supplier and the right relationship. Steel Cities Steels' representatives will answer your important questions and help you find the right product and services for your projects.
Yield - measure of how well steel can hold up to stress, maximum stress before it starts to change shape.
Brinell Hardness - a scale-indent steel with a hardened steel ball. On the scale 100 is soft, 650 is hard.
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Cold-formed steel was first used in framing and construction around the s, both domestically in the United States and abroad in Great Britain. One of the first documented uses of cold-formed steel was the Virginia Baptist Hospital in Lynchburg, Virginia that was built around .
Due to lack of design standards and little to no information on the product, acceptance of the material was limited until the ’s when Lustron Homes built and sold almost 2,500 steel-frames homes, with the framing, finishes, cabinets and furniture made from cold-formed steel.
Cold-formed steel framed construction and homes are known for their longevity, strength, and resistance to harsh elements. This makes them ideal for even the most extreme environments and a notable sign of quality construction.
The first and most important rule of reading and understanding a steel gauge chart is using the right one. Meaning coated steel gauges like galvanized are vastly different from uncoated steel like hot rolled and cold rolled gauges.
Standard gauge numbers and sizes were developed based on the weight of the sheet for a given material and coating. The equivalent thicknesses differ for each gauge number. You must use the specific gauge chart for each material to learn the right thickness.
So, in this case, you’ll need the Cold Rolled Gauge Chart.
Now that you have the right chart, it’s time to understand how it’s measured. Gauges are different from other measurement units such as inches or centimeters. That’s due to there being no universal thickness measurement for metal during the 19th century.
The British iron wire industry adopted metal gauges over other traditional units like inches as the primary unit of measurement, and thus it’s become the standard for the steel industry, being used across sheet metals.
When looking at a gauge chart, the key to understanding it, including our cold rolled chart, is to look at the number. Gauges range from 3-31, each has a specific thickness assigned to it for the material based upon its weight.
The general rule across all gauge charts is the larger the number, the thinner the steel. The inverse is also true, as the gauge number gets lower, the thicker the steel gets. But, those numbers do not give you specific dimensional values. Follow the chart for the exact numbers you need.
If you’re looking for an even simpler solution to understanding the correct gauge, weight, width, and measurement conversions of any steel product, use our steel calculator Unravel.
Whether calculating gauges for cold rolled, hot rolled, and coated materials, looking for sheet metal or coil measurements, or just looking for unit conversion to inches and pounds, Unravel does the work for you.
If you want to learn more, please visit our website Construction Steel H-Beam.