Sells Billets & Blooms, Cold Rolled, Billets-Blooms, Angles +8
Buys Cold Rolled, Billets-Blooms, Billets & Blooms, Angles +8
Buys Cold Rolled, Billets-Blooms, Billets & Blooms, Angles +8
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Square or rectangular semi-finished stainless steel, cast or rolled at the melt shop and re-rolled into wire rod, bars, sections and seamless tube rounds, or forged. Billets are the feed for every stainless long product, so their chemistry and internal soundness decide the quality of everything rolled from them.
A billet is a semi-finished length of steel with a square or near-square section, typically up to about 200 mm; a bloom is the larger section, above about 200 mm, often rectangular. Both are intermediate products: nobody builds with a billet, but every stainless bar, coil of wire rod, angle and seamless tube starts as one.
Stainless steel is melted in an electric arc furnace, refined in an AOD (argon oxygen decarburisation) or VOD converter to bring carbon down while keeping the chromium, and then continuously cast into billets or blooms. Larger blooms and ingots may be rolled down on a blooming mill into smaller billets, which improves the internal structure. Billets for seamless tubes are often round, and forging billets are usually conditioned (ground) all over so that surface defects do not fold into the forging.
The quality questions are chemistry, cleanliness and soundness. Centre segregation, porosity and inclusions in the billet carry through to the finished bar or tube, and surface cracks or laps open up in rolling. Austenitic grades such as 304 and 316L are the bulk of the trade; ferritic 430 and martensitic 410 and 420 billets feed bar and wire mills, and duplex 2205 billets go to pipe, fittings and forging shops.
Stainless steelmaking capacity in the GCC is small, so stainless billets reach the region mainly as feed for re-rolling, forging and fitting shops; most of the Middle East's stainless long products arrive already rolled. World supply is concentrated in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and Europe.
Billets are sold by cross-section, length and grade. For forging and seamless tube the buyer usually specifies the surface condition and an ultrasonic test as well.
| Region | Standard | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| USA | ASTM A314 ASTM |
Stainless steel billets and bars for forging |
| USA | ASTM A484/A484M ASTM |
General requirements for stainless steel bars, billets, shapes and forgings — tolerances, testing, marking |
| Europe | EN 10088-3 CEN-CENELEC |
Stainless steels — technical delivery conditions for semi-finished products, bars, rods, wire, sections and bright products for general purposes |
| Europe | EN 10088-1 CEN-CENELEC |
Stainless steels — list of stainless steels, chemical composition and physical properties |
| International | ISO 15510 ISO |
Stainless steels — chemical composition; cross-references grades between systems |
| Japan | JIS G4303 JSA |
Stainless steel bars (also used as the grade basis for billets) |
| China | GB/T 20878 SAC |
Stainless and heat-resisting steels — designation and chemical composition |
| Russia / CIS | GOST 5632 | Stainless and corrosion-resistant, heat-resistant and creep-resistant high-alloy steels and alloys — grades |
Grade equivalents and the standards bodies: Steel grades & standards
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