when people have steel in the shops on the racks they paint the end with a colour indicating the alloy. they typically write on the colour the batch number and the diameter. I've noticed two very widely dispersed sellers of steel that indentify S1214 free machining steel with pink ends. seems more than a coincidence.
is there actually a standard industry practise for the identification of alloys with colour on the rod ends? what is the colour code?
Stealth Pilot
There are many standards. Unfortunately, they vary from supplier to supplier :-(
Mark Rand RTFM
No!
Sadly.
Widely dispersed is not a real indicator of standardisation. They both may well be buying from the same supplier.
The only reliable color/alloy reference is the one you get from the guy that painted the ends of the bar.
Cheers Trevor Jones
As others said no. In this day of standards for just about everything, I wonder why we don't have them now.
Wes
yeah, really, as from a previous thread, even oxygen cylinders don't have a standardized color scheme.
b.w.
--FWIW at the local steel supplier the paint on the end only serves to indicate thickness, i.e. yellow for 1/8". Probably different in every town! ;-)
Yes. White paint forming numbers. Whenever I get any (known) non-mild steel, I immediately white-paint-mark the bar in 3 or 4 places with SAE or AISI marking, ie: W1, 1045.
Other than that, no.
Pete Stanaitis
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Stealth Pilot wrote:
Probably it is not standard but you could compare with this table:
The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
According to Stealth Pilot :
Maybe they came from a common source.
There is not only *a* standard -- but a different one per steel seller. :-)
For your example of S1214 (Which I presume to be similar to
12L14, Ledloy), the choices in the Jorgensen steel catalog are:Carbon Bars & Strip
Leaded Grade A (Ledloy A, La-Led) Brown & White Leaded Grade B (Ledloy B, Super La-Led) Green Leaded Grade AX (Ledloy AX) Pink & Purple
======================================================================
Looking for just plain pink with no other color, I find:
Aircraft Alloy Bars
4130 Normalized PinkAnd 4130 is *far* from "free machining S1214" (which is probably a version of one of the LedLoy alloys above).
I have seen posted other colors from other vendors, but I don't have their catalogs to check.
If you want a standard -- pick the standard of your usual vendor, and if you get any steel from other sources, re-paint that steel to match your usual vendor's standard.
Enjoy, DoN.
My local supplier has cold rolled metric sections marked pink, the inch cold rolled are some other colour. Like they say it just depends on which mill it comes from.
Speaking of 4130... I have a sample pack of 4130 N tube & rod from Aircraft Spruce to play with, ie practice threading and TIG welding. The lathe is old & worn and I have trouble with carbide chipping, so I'll likely machine it with HSS and brushed-on cutting oil. Any advice?
jw
Which, when you think about it, kinda kills being able to use the word "standard", doesn't it?
Mike
I colour my stock with the same colours that Macready's (Niagara La Salle) use. I even have a nice wall chart that I blagged off them.
This is a good standard for me to follow, since I buy nearly all my steel from them.
A common standard would be nice, but it would cause a lot of pain for almost everyone while it was being introduced. I'm still traumatized by the European harmonization of electrical cable colours... No-one had a meaningful system except us, and we had to comply with their weird prejudices!
Mark Rand RTFM
Sor of reminds me the "Inch vs Meter" argument. :-) ...lew...
Yup! Espescially if the carbide tools were of the brazed variety.
My advice is this. "It's about bloody time!"
High speed steel works very well, and is quite forgiving. The carbide (brazed) tools can save your butt when you have a bit of work hardened stainless to deal with, or similar, but generally need to be ground to get decent performance out of them. Grinding a decent edge onto brazed carbide is tougher than getting a decent edge on HSS, IMO, and requires a far larger investment in wheels for the grinder as well.
Take a good look at the thread form diagrams for the threads you are cutting. More like than not, there is supposed to be a flat on the tip of the tool. This flat makes the thread turn out the correct shape, and makes the tool even tougher to destroy. Both good things!
Get a decent magnifying glass to look at your tool tip with! A good quality thread gage is a real boon too! Cheap thread gages are mostly punch-cut or sheared, and have shitty edges to compare to. Tough to get a nice clean, straight line when you don't have a decent straight side on the gage. Good thread gages are pretty cheap, and they don't wear very fast.
One of the things I show guys in my shop, is to grind a long straight
30 degree line from the front left corner of the tool blank. The 30 degree grind in the other direction then is a very short, easy touch against the wheel. It makes it quite simple to cut up to a shoulder, when you do not have to grind a great bloody hack out of the bit to clear it. It also makes for a very fast return to working after a crash, as most of the tooth form is there already.I have, on occasion, ground threading tools using one of the existing straight sides of the tool bit (just add some releif) and a 60 degree grind across the end. It has to sit at 30 degrees (tool bit is aligned with the compound, rather than at 90 deg to the axis of the work), but works fine.
Sharp sharp sharp! Sharp tools cut well!
Cheers Trevor Jones
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