Recent Developments in Fine Controlled Structural Alloy Steels and Their Applications to Automotive Parts

The steel makers in Japan are improving the steel making technology in order to control the chemical composition of steel finely in narrow range.

Advancements in out-of-furnace refining technologies such as ladle refining and R-H vacuum degassing process, composition control by computers, and hardenability controlling technique have greatly contributed to the improvement of material characteristics of steels.

New materials have been developed by these techniques, and these materials are greatly helping save cost in manufacturing process of automotive parts.

Improvements in manufacturing technologies by the steel makers have brought about enormous merits to the automobile manufacturers.