Pm vg10

[Threethreethree]

Hello there

How come there isnt yet a powder version of VG10 or N690CO ? Given the good reports on CPM154 being less chippy and being able to be heat treated up to 61-62 hrc i foresee it would be even better with VG10.
Maybe Takefu cant process powder metals, i dont know, yet Bohler can and as far as i know they dont offer PM N690CO.

Enlighten me please.

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

Hard to speculate about why manufacturers do/don't pursue PM processes for certain recipes. There may not be much to gain, versus what it'd cost to upgrade to a PM process, if there are other similar steels offering similar or better performance. Only way to know for sure, is to ask the steel manufacturers themselves. They may or may not be willing to talk, as a lot of what they do is proprietary (it could be they've already 'tested' such things, if they have the capability to do so); but they might give some indication of which alternative PM steels should fill the need, if there are any. Any other 'explanations', from anyone not actually making the steel or involved in it, is just speculative (including my own comments here ).

I think most 'PM' steels are designed to reduce carbide sizes and therefore improve grindability/machinability in steels with carbides that would otherwise be larger and more difficult to grind (especially vanadium carbides). VG-10 isn't really considered to be a difficult-to-grind steel, so far as I know. This is a description of VG-10 from Takefu's own site (I added the bolded emphasis):

(text below is quoted from site: http://www.e-tokko.com/eng_vg10.htm )

"Features

When users chose cutting steels which are suitable for various kinds of knives, thier demands for performance of cutting steels becomes diverse, but the indispensable prerequisites of good steel have never changed.
V Gold 10, a high quality cutting stainless steel, is made from highly-selected pure iron material and is worked by best technology, thus VG10 has ductility and shows workability and forgeability. Besides VG10 is free from corrosion caused by impure substances and achieved good abrasion resistance. Our V Steel Series boast these excellent features.

V Gold10 is composed by raw materials and some elements that form alloys.
Addition of 15% of Cr, 1% of Mo and 1,5% of Co makes the matrix (substrate) stronger and prevents carbides from dropping out. By adding V, the structure becomes finer. Added Cr, Mo, and V form a lot of hard carbides, so abrasion resistance imoroves which gives knives long-term clean cutting, VG10 is rather machinable and easy to grind.
VG10 also has quadratic effect in high-tempereature tempering that it is ideal use in cutting tools which are given surface-coating at up to about 450℃.
"

Takefu does apparently have a couple of PM-series steels, 'Super X' and 'Super Gold (SG)'. See bottom of chart from their site here:
http://www.e-tokko.com/eng_original_list.htm


David