5 things you want to know about stainless steel

When they asked you to take care of the next stainless steel product line it was an exciting moment.

That's the kind of product line that keeps a company aside from competitors, that shows all the design quality potential your company has and it was time to show.

Now, you're out for stainless steel and you find out there is not just "one" type of it.

Great!

Let's talk about types, procurement, processing, then! You're going to love it.

1.

Steel is great. Stainless is steel is even better: it doesn't rust, it's tough, it can be completed with polishing, brushing, mirror finishing and many other and cleaned easily.

It can be laser cut and then folded and welded in many shapes and plates are as thin as 1 mm.

Zinox Laser R&D specialists do indeed engineer shower heads as thin as 3,5 mm, with lovely scotch brite finishing and perfectly pouring rain, spray and even led stripes.

When it comes to steel quality you want to take a good look at the AISI specifications of the various steel types, for a start.

2.

And pay attention: there're the AISI and the SAE standards, but good luck is they have been recently standardised so, now, most producers use both standard codes.

If you are going through a specialist in steel machining, though, they will only need you to tell them what you want to be used.

3.

You might want to leave the ferritic type alone - AISI 403 - because it's not completely rustless, so to say. Although it's quite common, indeed. And cheap. Fun detail: it is magnetic.

It is widely used because of its good formability, but a lower grade of corrosion and temperature resistance lower than level 3 steel.

4.

You might want to consider the AISI 316 - amongst the austenitic ones - which has marine grade corrosion resistance and it is used also in surgical tools and nuclear plants. Austenitic type steels are not magnetic.

It's components are 16%-18% chromium, 11%-14% nickel and 2%-3% molybdenum giving him even chlorine corrosion resistance.

It's the second most common type and the highest quality you could think of in our market.

3.

And the winner is...

Most common type is type 304.

It is the very common 18/8 steel, which are the amounts of chromium (18%-20%) and nickel (8%-11%) in the alloy. Also known as 18/10 steel it is so largely used that it's the (high quality) standard for cooking tools and even coins.

It has great machinability, good resistance to oxidation and a good price/performance on corrosion resistance.

ZINOX laser can make shower heads and fountains and spouts with all possible types of metal sheets, with different finishing and colours including the stunning supermirror version.