Something about the Benefits of High-Speed Steel for Your Tools

High speed steel, as the name suggests, cuts through materials at a relatively high speed without undergoing abrasions or tears on itself. It has replaced Carbon steel across various industries due to its affordability, efficiency and better performance. It stays sharper than carbon steel and is not as brittle as carbon steel. HSS is mostly used for manufacturing cutting tool, especially drill bits. Hardness of high speed steel enhances its performance to a great extent. It also has a high Rockwell hardness level, which is 60. Due to the high hardness, another benefit gets added to the list. It is precisely referred to as ability to re-grind. After the drill bits and rest of the cutting tools have lost its edge, it becomes easier to sharpen and grind them compared to other steel alloys. It confirms a longer life for tooling. High speed steel has plenty of other benefits.

1.      Resistance against high temperatures – High speed steel can endure excessively high temperatures. Although heat levels of various alloys vary, most alloys can easily endure up to 650 degrees temperature. HSS undergoes rigorous heat treatment. The motive behind hardening or heat treatment is to bring transformation to an entirely annealed high speed steel tool containing mostly ferrite and alloy carbides into a tempered and hardened martensitic structure which consists of carbides that supply the cutting tool properties.

2.       Resistance against wears and abrasions – If a blade is tough enough, there are higher chances for it to hold the edge for a longer period of time. During industrial applications involving high temperatures or high pressure, one can expect high speed steel components to exhibit resistance against abrasions and wears, to retain its original quality even after consecutive cutting compared to other alloys. Sometimes, manufacturers prefer to add another layer of coating on high speed steel in order to gain additional resistance against abrasions.

       High speed performance – High performance of high speed steel allows it to drill it thick and hard metals. Efficiently cutting through materials at high speed is one of the benefits of this as a cutting tool. It is due to the extraordinary combination of the alloys, rendering wear resistance, resistance against high temperatures and hot hardness. In fact, high speed steel can offer hardness up to seven times more compared to conventional alloys.

4.       Categories and benefits – High speed steel can be primarily categorized into four – tungsten, cobalt, vanadium and molybdenum. Depending on the percentage of each of these alloying components, the properties of high speed steel slightly change. Nevertheless, the basic features remain the same. High percentage of tungsten ensures wear resistance and increase in tempering. Cobalt percentage influence hardening temperatures and also improves resistance against heat. Due to high percentage of Vanadium in high speed steel, wear resistance of finished tools is increased. Molybdenum increases toughness. There are few more alloying components that provide unique qualities to high speed steel.

5.       Wide range of applications – Due to resistance against fractures and high toughness, high speed steel is extremely useful for machine tool that has decreased stiffness and high positive rake angle tools. HSS is used in a vast range of cutting operations that need complex shape of tools. Taps, drills, reamers, broaches, gear cutters and milling cutters.

Thus, high speed steel is extremely useful and had quite a list of benefits.