From Newsgroup: sci.engr.joining.welding

Sam Plusnet <not@home.com> writes:

On 31/08/2026 09:11, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:

I question that. Wikipedia has an article about cast iron and
another one about steel. Though both kinds have iron plus
impurities, their properties are sufficiently different to earn
different names - and more important, different uses.

Iron may 'suffer' from impurities, whilst steel contains carefully
controlled 'impurities' which are selected to give it the preferred properties.

ItrCOs quite a bit more confusing than that.

References to unqualified rCLironrCY before the 19th century, and sometimes thereafter, almost invariably refer to wrought iron.

Wrought iron (which is no longer manufactured commercially, not since
Thomas Walmley and Sons shut down the Aston Forge in Bolton in England
in 01973) overlaps with mild steel in composition, but has a different macrostructure, with slag inclusions giving it a fibrous structure and
reducing its susceptibility to corrosion.

In the specific case of *cast* iron, rCLironrCY *also* "contains carefully controlled impurities which are selected to give it the preferred
properties". In fact, the main impurity in both cases is carbon. Cast
iron has quite a bit more of it (over 2%) than steel; low-carbon rCLmildrCY grades of steel can have as little carbon as wrought iron does. Roughly speaking, the usual ferrous grades are something like this:

- 0rCo0.1% carbon: wrought iron
- 0.05rCo0.3% carbon: mild steel
- 0.3rCo2.1% carbon: carbon steel
- 2.1rCo4.5% carbon: cast iron
- 3.5rCo4.7% carbon: pig iron (rarely seen outside foundries)

Also, if you have 10.5% or more of chromium, itrCOs rCLstainless steelrCY,
even if it has no carbon.

Cast iron normally also contains silicon to improve its casting
properties.

From the perspective of anyone who has studied this stuff, the above is
a terrible oversimplification, since there are hundreds of grades of
steels, with dramatically different properties, and different pieces of
steel may even have the same composition but dramatically different
properties due to heat treatment.

This is almost certainly off-topic for alt.usage.english at this point,
but which of the still-active newsfroups would be best for it?

Kragen
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From Newsgroup: sci.engr.joining.welding

On the subject of iron and steel ...

One of my undergraduate subjects was called "Engineering Materials". I
went to the first few lectures, and discovered that the subject was
being taught by one of the worst lecturers I had ever encountered. His
lectures were useless. The textbook was pretty good, though, so I
decided to learn the subject by private study.

Over the course of the year I became quite an expert on steel: the
different kinds, crystal structure, properties, smelting processes, and
so on.

When I got to the final exam, I discovered that the syllabus had been
changed. Practically nothing I had studied was on the exam. I just
barely scraped through that subject.
--
Peter Moylan peter@pmoylan.org http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW
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From Newsgroup: sci.engr.joining.welding

Den 01.09.2026 kl. 02.00 skrev Kragen Javier Sitaker:

This is almost certainly off-topic for alt.usage.english at this point,
but which of the still-active newsfroups would be best for it?

In the Good Old Days (tm) when there was traffic in all the newsgroups,
you could find one that was relevant. Today almost all of them are dead,
and therefore subjects that strictly speaking are offtopic, are accepted
in this group. The language groups are the last ones to die out for some reason.

If you read the stuff that we've been discussing through the last years, you'll find heaps that are offtopic.

Your message is number 15 in the set that is about iron.
--
Bertel, Kolt, Danmark

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From Newsgroup: sci.engr.joining.welding

Bertel Lund Hansen <rundtosset@lundhansen.dk> writes:

In the Good Old Days (tm) when there was traffic in all the
newsgroups, you could find one that was relevant. Today almost all of
them are dead, and therefore subjects that strictly speaking are
offtopic, are accepted in this group. The language groups are the last
ones to die out for some reason.

IrCOve found quite a few that seem active over the past few days of
browsing, and theyrCOre not all language groups. But alt.usage.english is
in some sense the healthiest group IrCOve found so far. Here are some
groups roughly ranked by volume, with my casual impressions:

- alt.usage.english: 70 messages per day
- comp.os.linux.advocacy: 60 messages per day, but mostly politics
flames and racism
- alt.buddha.short.fat.guy: 40 messages per day, but mostly politics
flames and racism
- sci.math: 30 messages per day, but it's mostly cranks flaming each other
- rec.arts.sf.written: 20 messages per day
- sci.electronics.design: 20 messages per day
- soc.culture.jewish: 20 messages per day, but theyrCOre all deranged spam
from Christian fundamentalists
- comp.os.vms: 20 messages per day
- comp.lang.c: 10 messages per day
- alt.folklore.computers: 10 messages per day
- comp.lang.forth: 4 messages per day, including many excellent posters
- comp.lang.lisp: 4 messages per day, including many excellent posters
- sci.crypt: 2 messages per day
- comp.arch.fpga: 2 messages per day
- comp.lang.misc: 2 messages per day
- talk.bizarre: 0.5 messages per day
- rec.radio.amateur.moderated: 0.4 messages per day, mostly ARRL
announcements
- alt.sys.pdp10: 0.4 messages per day
- comp.infosystems.gemini: 0.3 messages per day, surprising for a
protocol created in 02019
- alt.lang.asm: 0.2 messages per day
- comp.compilers: 0.2 messages per day, but theyrCOre by really top people
- comp.text.pdf: 0.2 messages per day
- rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors: 0.1 messages per day
- comp.ai: 0.05 messages per day
- alt.hackers: 0.02 messages per day

Kragen
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From Newsgroup: sci.engr.joining.welding

Every engineering material is optimised... There is no way energy would
be expended, transport of materials to be at the place where the
manufacture happens, etc. - then you do not optimise the material you
make and the products resulting. The incentive for the effort to give a
result is way way way way too high.

As it seems to me (metallurgist, significantly an engineer, etc.) ...

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