Steel still king

Advanced steels and processes offer better performance and lower cost, particularly in powertrain applications.

The old motivational saying, “If you're not improving, you're getting worse,” can very easily be applied to the materials development world. Design engineers, metallurgists, tribologists, process personnel, and others are constantly working to offer better performance, higher quality, lower overall cost, and simpler processing from their products; because if they're not, a new material or a different grade from a competing company is always waiting to add new applications to its resume.

In the off-highway industry, steel is by far the material of choice. But still, competition exists. “There's not a lot of drive to reduce weight or go to ultra-high strengths [in off-highway], so usually one steel is competing against another,” said Mike Burnett, a technologist at Timken. “Most applications, steel is the incumbent and it has been for many years, and we're just improving upon what has been the historical material in the application.”