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Does anyone know why most stainless steel pots and pans contain large amounts of nickel? As I understand it, nickel is there to stabilize austenite, which has
by amluto 5y ago
Does anyone know why most stainless steel pots and pans contain large amounts of nickel? As I understand it, nickel is there to stabilize austenite, which has some potentially nice mechanical properties but is non-magnetic and not great at conducting heat. Nickel is also fairly expensive, so it seems to me that less than expensive alloys without nickel could be preferable.
So why doesn’t everyone use, say, 430 stainless steel pans?
- adrian_b 5y agoThe 400 series of steels (without nickel) are not ductile enough for certain kinds of manufacturing technologies. So cutlery is made with the cheaper 400 series, but pots and other vessels are made from the more expensive 300 series, with nickel, because they need to survive a large deformation from a plane sheet of metal to a deep pot, without cracking during the deformation. The fact that the nickel also ensures good corrosion resistance against hot acidic food juices is a bonus. The same corrosion resistance could be achieved without nickel, at higher chromium content (superferritic steels), but those steels are too fragile to be formed into vessels from sheets.