Stainless steel is a popular metal substrate for products throughout the consumer, commercial, and industrial markets. However, stainless steel has a high degree of tensile strength, becomes harder the more it’s worked, and has significant spring back. This makes metal spinning for stainless steel more difficult than with other metals. If you need spun stainless steel components, make sure you’re working with an experienced metal spinning services provider who can do the work properly and ensure the finished goods fulfill the required specifications.
Not only can experienced metalworkers handle stainless steel while spinning, but they can also heat the metal to make it more formable, electropolish it, or polish it to brush or mirror finishes. This level of service ensures you can take advantage of stainless steel’s favorable characteristics—corrosion resistance, strength, durability, and usefulness in exterior settings—without sacrificing total product quality.
Stainless Steel Metal Spinning Alloys
Stainless steel is fabricated in a wide range of different alloy formulations, with manufacturers often choosing a particular metal from the standard family of alloys that includes 301, 302, 303, 304, 316, and 347 stainless steel. At Metal Craft Spinning and Stamping , we provide high-quality stainless steel metal spinning for two popular stainless steel alloys: SS 304 and SS 316.
Stainless Steel Alloy 304
304 is the most common type of stainless steel. It’s incredibly versatile and can be used to produce goods for consumers and commercial applications. It offers high tensile strength. The non-iron formulation is:
- 18-20% chromium
- 8-10.5% nickel
- No more than 0.08% carbon
The metal is also austenitic, with favorable characteristics such as resistance to heat, creep, and corrosion. The metal point of this alloy is 2550° F, giving it a high level of resistance to high temperatures in virtually any environment. The metal does not have strong magnetic properties, especially compared to general steel. It is also less thermally or electrically conductive than carbon steel alloys. It also is more vulnerable to corrosion from chlorides and exposure to coastal environments than stainless steel 316.
Stainless Steel Alloy 316
While not as popular as stainless steel 304, SS 316 is a food-grade material made from iron, 16-18% chromium, 10-14% nickel, a trace of carbon, and 2-3% molybdenum. The addition of molybdenum makes the metal even more durable in extreme, corrosive, and acidic environments by increasing resistance to both corrosion and pitting from exposure to chloride ion solutions (like brine). Molybdenum also makes the metal stronger at high temperatures. While stainless steel 316 may be more expensive than 304, it can better withstand exposure to chlorides and acids from its surrounding environment.
Stainless Steel Metal Spinning Tolerances
Handled properly, stainless steel can respond very well to metal spinning. Metal spun stainless steel goods are strong, resistant to corrosion, and built to last. At Metal Craft S&S, we can work with stainless steel that’s between 10GA and 24 GA thick, and we operate within tolerance levels of +/-0.02 or +/-0.03.
Custom Spun Stainless Steel
With custom-spun stainless steel options from Metal Craft, your company can manufacture a wide range of products across furniture, home goods, construction, and machinery industries. Some of the products our team has fabricated with stainless steel spinning include:
- Bowls
- Roof drains
- Fan panels
- Furniture bases, such as chair bases
- Hemispheres and cone shapes
- Hoppers
- Inlets
- Lids
- Metal housings
- Tank heads
Work With Metal Craft for Stainless Steel Metal Spinning
Metal spinning is an efficient manufacturing process that offers minimal material waste and can produce goods without seams. While stainless steel is harder to work with than many other popular metals or alloys, the engineering experts at Metal Craft can provide high-quality metal spinning services for either stainless steel 304 or stainless steel 316. Contact us today to learn more about our comprehensive spinning and stamping capabilities, or request a quote to start your order today. Just tell us your industry, order volume, and other details to get a fast quote for your project.