Choose right wear steel

[About wear steel] [Weld bucket steel & wear plate] [Wear of wear steel - steel vs stone] [About cemented carbide]

At Partrex, we are careful and selective when choosing which wear steel we sell and what we recommend to you as a customer depending on what you will use the steel for. We weigh in all crucial aspects based on the area of use when choosing wear steel: wear resistance, toughness, weldability and price.

Various brands of hardened wear steels abound in the market, but most wear steels used in buckets, plows and flatbeds in Sweden are in hardened boron steel. Examples of brands of hardened boron steels are Hardox, Swebor, Bruxite, Borox, Olofsfors, RAEX, Fora and Dillidur. Different producers may differ in the quality of their production processes and all manufacturers may in individual batches fail with the quality of the steel. But many manufacturers today have equally good manufacturing processes and a consistent level of quality. However, they may differ in how they have adjusted their boron steel alloys on individual products and dimensions, for example, the carbon content of the steel. Particularly on thicker steels (+40 mm), manufacturers also differ in how they name their wear steels. For example, wear steel marked "500" can have different qualities at different manufacturers that, among other things, affect the weldability. From the manufacturers' data sheets, you can read a lot about the steel's weldability and wear resistance.

Common to all hardened boron steels, regardless of brand, is that:

Increased hardness gives increased resistance to abrasive wear (buckets and plow steel wear).
Lower carbon and alloy content provide better weldability.

The latter is a decisive reason for the boron steel's great success as a wear steel. With only 0.0035% boron, added to the steel melt in the right way, a relatively low-alloy steel with good weldability and good hardenability is obtained at a reasonable price. Without this fantastic discovery, our buckets, flatbeds and plow steel would be both heavier and more expensive. Swedish steel producers have also been pioneers in the field of boron steel since the 1970s, which has also influenced the design of Swedish construction machine tools. Today, boron alloys are used by steel mills all over the world. Partrex sells wear steel products specially developed and selected for Swedish buckets, plows and flatbeds. Ask us and we will help you make the right steel choice based on your use and need.