I ran solid Stellite bearings for years [ a bar of stock ran into the thousands of dollars] high speed tools will not touch it. For turning I used cutting oil, for drilling I used carbide drills. To break edges I bought carbide files as Stellite would just cut the standard files. I ran at least 100,000 parts and remember it well. I think machinability is about 5%. I think the chips went for about $12.00 lb. email me off line if you want and I will pass along what I know about this stuff. Jim
I have a job where I need to make some small stellite pieces. The quantity is about 500-1000 per lot and the job will repeat about once a year. Parts are about 1" x 1" x 3/16" thick with a couple of beveled edges. Parts are Stellite 6 or 6B (we're checking this out).
The problem is we have no experience with stellite. It's hard as the dickens is about all the experience we have with it. Stellite.com doesn't have any machining or cutting data. Haynes specifiys C2 carbide on their version of stellite with some feed/speed information, however, not enough to do anything but experiment and "discover' what really works.
Can anyone provide any information that will help guide us a little on this project? Any experiences/comments would be greatly appreciated.
You'll probably need to specify what you want to do to the parts.
You can ask this question on alt.machines.cnc. There are several guys there who run Stellite in their machines. Not to say this group is without use, but you might as well get as many people in on this as possible. Stellite isn't exactly a very popular material in hobby metalworking.
There's a 2" square bar of it somewhere in my Dad's garage. We've probably had the thing 40 years now, and never once come anywhere close to being able to do a damned thing with it. Damn stuff is like kryptonite.
Makes one hell of a knife. As does its marginally easier to work cousin, Talonite.
Gunner
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You will find stellite used on, valve seats, valves, for some high performance motors. You can look at the valve face and see it blend with the steel. Sort of a region of stellite.
Borg Warner uses stellite for their manufactured control valves for oil platforms. I have toured their plant, its great. Its down in Temecula, Califl.
Three applications of stellite #6: One day there was a box of #6 stellite TIG rods in the blowout sale bin at my local welding supply shop. I grabbed them.
I have an older but perfectly serviceable (except for one problem) electric stove. The contacts on the plug-in elements are a bullet shaped copper cylinder molded onto the end of the wire that sticks out of the connector end of the elements. The copper corodes slightly, contact resistance increases, more heat is generated, corrosion rate increases, even more heat is generated, ..., connector mounted on stove top fails. I managed to score one of the last stove top connectors for this model in captivity - mfr wants you to replace element AND connector with "new" expensive style.
My fix: melt off copper "bullet", build up Stellite #6 bullet, grind to final shape. Clean contacts on stove top connectors and re-install all. Fix was done in '96 - all contacts are bright and clean today.
I have a TIG outfit so why did I use O/A for this? Answer: What would you do for a ground? There is no room where the wire exits the element and the other end is a lot of resistance away. == I have an HD center punch that I made by TIGing a blob of stellite onto the end of a piece of scrap re-bar. I then put this in the lathe and shaped the tip with carbide cutters. The stuff must work harden 'cause I had to sharpen it once shortly after I made it about three years ago. It has never needed sharpening since. == I made a cold/hot chisel by the above procedure. Works very well. Loaned it to a friend to knock knobs off concrete. He just returned it and it is still quite sharp and has no chipping on the edge.
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