- Joined
- Apr 10, 2000
- Messages
- 3,794
Hi All,
In short the goal was to create the knife steel composition database. There's plenty of the steel tables on the net, but what I wanted was a good interactivity. In general it's pretty difficult to compare 2 steels when they are pages apart. or simply have the table with just the few steels I'm interested in.
Thus, the result was the largest project for my site, which can be broken into two separate, but connected parts:
Interactive Knife Steel Database. Which in essence is the same table, but also has filters which allow to select only the steels with particular name patterns (e.g. steels starting with CPM or having '12' anywhere in the name) or certain composition. E.g. display steels which contain Niobium or Nitrogen, or alternatively display the steels that have between 1% and 1.5% carbon, only Japanese steels, or only Powder Metallurgy, etc... It can get pretty complex, but it's quite flexible.
Table contains composition of the alloys, their origin (when known), technology used(CPM, PM) and few other things. Detailed info on the columns is in the help file of the page.
Table can be sorted by any column in ascending or descending direction. Steel names marked with * have attached notes, which can be seen when moving mouse over the name. To hide the sticky again hit the Esc key or click the mouse outside of the sticky or click the close button on the sticky.
Filters button opens up the form where all the query settings can be specified and table will be rebuilt with those settings.
Elements button displays detailed information about the chemical elements used in the alloys and their purpose/effect in the alloys.
Help - Well, self explanatory.
Graph - Builds graph based on the current selection in the # column. Up to 7 steels can be selected to build the graph.
# column is used to mark up to 7 alloys for comparison. Just select particular alloys and click the Graph button. Which brings us to part 2.
Steel analyzer/comparator graph. Basically it's a graph to compare several steel compositions. It's a lot easier on the image than in the table. The link here shows comparative chart of A2,M2 and CPM M4.
The graph builder retrieves selected steel data from the database and then groups each element values for the alloys.
Bars are grouped by chemical elements, each bar in the group represents value from an alloy in the selection. Color coding is the same for all groups of the single graph.
For the data where specification allows variance, i.e. 0.6%-0.8% C, the bar is darker color from 0 to 0.6% and then lighter color from 0.6% to the top, which is 0.8% to indicate the interval.
You can add/remove alloys form the graph using the Analyze Steel edit control on the graph page. Steel names are separated by , and it also features "autosuggest". start typing and the list of matching steels appears below, i.e. if you type C all the steels starting with C are shown, as you type more results become more refined. Also, since there are several names in that control, whatever is after the last coma will be used for autosuggest.
By default only more common chemical elements are shown on the graph, but you can fully control what elements the graph displays by clicking More button and selecting/removing chemical elements in there.
Then click the Build button to rebuild the graph.
Graph engine is relatively smart and tries to maximum number of information and distribute space evenly. Therefore the number of alloys you choose and the number of the elements are both affecting the graph. It can display 7 steels with default set of elements, but if you pick all the elements, there will not be enough space for all 7 steels and the last 3 will be dropped.
Well, I did try to make it simple to use, but as the features add up it's not easy to keep things simple.
Requirements:
Browsers - IE 7 or higher. FireFox, Kameleon, Chrome, etc. Sorry, no energy or will to mess with IE6 or older. Too different and old at that.
Javascript - It has to be enabled. Otherwise most of the interactivity is gone.
Also, I want to say thanks to DRsharpening, Watercrawl, Larin, thombrogan, Koki, Watanabe and many other folks from her eand other forums who helped with info, feedback and advices.
All the feedback, bug reports, improvement requests or ideas are welcome.
Please help with completing/expanding the database.
If you have composition or any other info about a steel not in the database please let me know and I'll update the db.
Especially welcome is the help with the missing information. if you find invalid data or if you know the real value of the ? in the table please let me know.
Also, for most of the steels I don't have country of the origin.
I'll be adding more steels and improving/fixing stuff, although next couple weeks will be real busy for me at work, so I may not be that quick with fixes.
P.S. I know help pages need improvement, will do...
In short the goal was to create the knife steel composition database. There's plenty of the steel tables on the net, but what I wanted was a good interactivity. In general it's pretty difficult to compare 2 steels when they are pages apart. or simply have the table with just the few steels I'm interested in.
Thus, the result was the largest project for my site, which can be broken into two separate, but connected parts:
Interactive Knife Steel Database. Which in essence is the same table, but also has filters which allow to select only the steels with particular name patterns (e.g. steels starting with CPM or having '12' anywhere in the name) or certain composition. E.g. display steels which contain Niobium or Nitrogen, or alternatively display the steels that have between 1% and 1.5% carbon, only Japanese steels, or only Powder Metallurgy, etc... It can get pretty complex, but it's quite flexible.
Table contains composition of the alloys, their origin (when known), technology used(CPM, PM) and few other things. Detailed info on the columns is in the help file of the page.
Table can be sorted by any column in ascending or descending direction. Steel names marked with * have attached notes, which can be seen when moving mouse over the name. To hide the sticky again hit the Esc key or click the mouse outside of the sticky or click the close button on the sticky.
Filters button opens up the form where all the query settings can be specified and table will be rebuilt with those settings.
Elements button displays detailed information about the chemical elements used in the alloys and their purpose/effect in the alloys.
Help - Well, self explanatory.
Graph - Builds graph based on the current selection in the # column. Up to 7 steels can be selected to build the graph.
# column is used to mark up to 7 alloys for comparison. Just select particular alloys and click the Graph button. Which brings us to part 2.
Steel analyzer/comparator graph. Basically it's a graph to compare several steel compositions. It's a lot easier on the image than in the table. The link here shows comparative chart of A2,M2 and CPM M4.
The graph builder retrieves selected steel data from the database and then groups each element values for the alloys.
Bars are grouped by chemical elements, each bar in the group represents value from an alloy in the selection. Color coding is the same for all groups of the single graph.
For the data where specification allows variance, i.e. 0.6%-0.8% C, the bar is darker color from 0 to 0.6% and then lighter color from 0.6% to the top, which is 0.8% to indicate the interval.
You can add/remove alloys form the graph using the Analyze Steel edit control on the graph page. Steel names are separated by , and it also features "autosuggest". start typing and the list of matching steels appears below, i.e. if you type C all the steels starting with C are shown, as you type more results become more refined. Also, since there are several names in that control, whatever is after the last coma will be used for autosuggest.
By default only more common chemical elements are shown on the graph, but you can fully control what elements the graph displays by clicking More button and selecting/removing chemical elements in there.
Then click the Build button to rebuild the graph.
Graph engine is relatively smart and tries to maximum number of information and distribute space evenly. Therefore the number of alloys you choose and the number of the elements are both affecting the graph. It can display 7 steels with default set of elements, but if you pick all the elements, there will not be enough space for all 7 steels and the last 3 will be dropped.
Well, I did try to make it simple to use, but as the features add up it's not easy to keep things simple.
Requirements:
Browsers - IE 7 or higher. FireFox, Kameleon, Chrome, etc. Sorry, no energy or will to mess with IE6 or older. Too different and old at that.
Javascript - It has to be enabled. Otherwise most of the interactivity is gone.
Also, I want to say thanks to DRsharpening, Watercrawl, Larin, thombrogan, Koki, Watanabe and many other folks from her eand other forums who helped with info, feedback and advices.
All the feedback, bug reports, improvement requests or ideas are welcome.
Please help with completing/expanding the database.
If you have composition or any other info about a steel not in the database please let me know and I'll update the db.
Especially welcome is the help with the missing information. if you find invalid data or if you know the real value of the ? in the table please let me know.
Also, for most of the steels I don't have country of the origin.
I'll be adding more steels and improving/fixing stuff, although next couple weeks will be real busy for me at work, so I may not be that quick with fixes.
P.S. I know help pages need improvement, will do...
Last edited:
A lot of people from this forum, KF and FF helped collecting/fixing the data. Once again, I appreciate all the help U provided and provide guys.