25/09/2026
Lets talk steel grades ⛓️
This will either invoke interest 🤓
Or the opposite 🥱 !
Are all items fabricators make from metal ? Yes
Are all items fabricators make from metal the same type of metal ? Nope
Lets break this down, take one of our current projects as an example, its carbon steel, ok this tells us nothing !
The type of carbon steel is S355 J2 +N so lets break this down.
●The 'S' stands for structural, the first letter of any grade designation tells us the intended use of the steel, this is for structures.
●The '355' stands for the yeild strength of the material, there are many different strengths of steel available, this is a very common grade of steel although stronger and weaker get used dependant on the specification.
●The J2 stands for the temperature it maintains its toughness, for structural steel the minimum toughness is a baseline reading but it looses that reading at colder temperatures, so the colder the steel the more brittle it is, the J2 on this products means it maintains its toughness down to minus 20°C 🥶
●Last but not least 'N' this stands for normalised, this means the material is effectively heat treated once rolled, it doesnt make the material stronger or tougher but it does make all the grains in the material nice and stable and under less stress, this makes for a better fabrication with fewer distortion risks.
How do you know the right material is beeing used ?
Dont worry thats on us the fabricators to ensure we are fed this information from the specifiers and its one of the many stages we have to go through to get to the final product !
