For example, without aluminum, there will be no transport — road, rail or air. Without copper, we would lose microwaves. And smartphones contain a whole scattering of metals, albeit in small quantities: cobalt, lithium, tungsten, molybdenum and others, including gold and silver.
Metals are so popular in our lives due to their unique properties: strength, uniformity, electrical conductivity, and so on. But metals are rarely used in their pure form; they are mainly used in the form of alloys consisting of a mix of two or more elements. The resulting material acquires the necessary characteristics that cannot be achieved from pure metals. First of all, alloys are created to give metal products greater strength, resistance to corrosion, hardness or, conversely, plasticity. The advantage of such compounds is also that an alloy with the most suitable range of properties can be selected for each specific application.
Rafting is also divided into groups; we will not go deep there, it is important to know this. Due to the development of high technologies, the requirements for the purity of alloys are constantly increasing, in addition, there is a need for materials with clearly defined physical and chemical properties. For example, certain conductivity, ductility, resistance to temperature changes, and so on. This is where precision alloys, which have already become irreplaceable, come in. They got their name from the French word precision — precision.
Precision alloys are highly alloyed metal combinations with a predetermined set of properties and characteristics, produced in strict adherence to technology and without foreign inclusions in the structure. The accuracy of the composition is the main condition for the production of precision alloys. The choice of elements included in the alloy and their pre-calculated ratio give the manufactured material special properties necessary in each specific case and field of use. Without these compounds, such industries as electrical engineering, aviation, energy, optics, nanotechnology and others would not be able to fully exist in our time.
Most precision alloys are made on the basis of ferrous metals, and only a few on the basis of non-ferrous metals. Materials are divided into seven categories depending on their properties, namely: soft magnetic alloys, hard magnetic alloys, alloys with a given temperature coefficient of linear expansion, alloys with specified elastic properties, superconducting alloys, and thermal bimetals.
The first precision alloy is considered to be invar, a compound of iron and nickel that was created in 1896 by French physicist Charles Guillaume. The scientist was looking for an inexpensive material for making standards of mass and length measures, because at that time a very expensive alloy based on platinum and iridium was used for this purpose. Guillaume was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of invar in 1920.
At the moment, almost all possible metal compounds are known. The domestic metallurgy industry is not lagging behind in this area. In Russia, current requirements for grades of precision alloys, their classification, chemical composition and properties are regulated by GOST 10994-74, as well as a number of international standards and other standardizing documents regarding specific grades and forms of production.
However, the search and development of new “super materials” will always continue. After all, precision alloys are modern works of art in the metallurgical industry, real precious bricks that form our technological future.
