Stainless Steel bars are very commonly used materials in the construction industry. They are also referred to as Stainless Steel rods, stainless rounds, or stainless round bars. The Stainless Steel Bars are widely used in a broad range of aesthetic and structural purposes across all industrial applications. Some of the applications include architectural design and engineering, food-grade production environments and utensils, household items, fixtures and products, medical supplies, machinery and surgical/ hygiene tools, chemical or marine vessels and equipment, oil/gas pipelines and platforms, water treatment and supply, transport and automotive components, tankers, and containers.
Stainless bars boast a wide range of characteristics but corrosion resistance remains the most important of all. The chief elements of Stainless Steel are iron and chromium and to qualify as stainless steel, the metal material should contain at least 10.5% chromium.
Other common elements present in different proportions in stainless steel include carbon, silicon, and manganese. Further alloying additions are also added during manufacture to achieve particular applications/characteristics of the finished product; these may usually include titanium, molybdenum, nickel, copper, or nitrogen. In a finished piece of stainless steel, the total sum of alloying ingredients may sometimes be as high as 30 percent.
A little further on in this guide, we will talk more about various types of stainless alloys and their respective characteristics, but you should still be mindful that the metal is processed and graded in several different ways when trying to purchase stainless steel online – be it bars, rods, or stainless steel tubes, sheets and angles.
This is required to meet various corrosion resistance requirements for use in very particular types of applications and environments, and this is why you can find so many different ‘grades’ of stainless products listed on most stainless steel bar suppliers’ catalog pages.
There are many different sizes of stainless steel bars or rods available in the market as there are uses for the product. Stainless steel grading systems are intended to provide consumers with an indication of both the alloy subtype used and the variety of applications for which a product is suitable.
