Industry is facing a challenge from growing lead times for remelted steel. In some cases, suppliers are quoting lead times of two years, with a minimum order quantity (MOQ) of 20 tonnes or more and with no flexibility to vary order quantity or dimensions.
This represents a major risk for manufacturers of bearings, rollers, gears and high-performance components for mining and industrial motion. They rely on remelted steel to avoid metal fatigue in demanding applications that need material to provide the same mechanical performance under complex dynamic loading from different axes.
As the production capacity for remelted steel is limited, it is worth looking for an alternative solution. OEMs typically buy remelted steel as it is required under long-standing technical specifications. These are well-proven but are often based on standards that were written 60 years ago.
Steelmaking has transformed in this time. As a producer of ultra-clean steel, we can deliver air melted steel that matches the performance of remelted steel.
Our IQ-Steel has comparable fatigue strength, machining experience and heat treatment response as remelted steels produced under the electroslag remelting (ESR) and vacuum arc refining (VAR) processes. This creates an opportunity for OEMs to specify IQ-Steel to overcome risk in the supply of remelted steel and shorten lead times.
