Powdered Steel Question

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72jroberts

Joined
Mar 16, 2012
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I'm interested in the manufacturing aspect of the powdered steels.
I am wondering by what method the powdered steel became a finished blade.
I'm imagining two possible scenarios:

1) All the elements, iron, vanadium, carbon, chromium (just an example to illustrate) are molten together in the correct ratios, allowed to harden, then ground to powder. Then the powder is put into molds and melted again into whatever shape and tempered, resulting in a finished product.

2) All the elements, iron, carbon, vanadium, chromium come to the factory in bar or sheet stock, are ground to powder separately. These groups of powders are then mixed in correct ratios, into a mold they go, say like a blade cutout, melted, cooled, the fine grinding is performed, then tempered, final sharpening, resulting in a finished product.

Either way, or a way that I haven't thought of, getting steel to powder is a costly and time consuming task. Which makes sense on the price being higher.

Since we are all interested in steels to some degree or another, it is an interesting persuit of information. Kinda like being a gun nut ( i plead guilty), there is reloading, which is a whole 'nother can of delicious gummy worms.

Thanks in advance for any enlightenment!
John
 
bluntcut's link is a great overview. The steel is then re-heated and rolled into slabs or sheets and cut into bars pretty much like any other steel, and knifemakers continue from there as normal.

The steel itself is indeed more expensive than a non-powder version, but the benefit is a high level of consistency. This actually makes it easier to work with, and results in tougher blades that hold their edges better, and take a finer finish. I'm a big fan.
 
This is exactly the information I was hoping to find!
Thank you Bluntcut for the link.

James, what kind of CPM's do you like to work with?
John
 
I worked in a powder-metal forging plant for several years in the late 90s in Romulus, Michigan. They manufactured transmission components and connecting rods for GM and Chrysler. They would buy big, bulk packs (5,000 pounds, if I remember correctly) of powdered metal. They would create preforms in large, hydraulic "briquetting" presses, solidify and heat-treat the preforms in large sintering furnaces, forge the preforms on 100 ton forge presses using inductive coil heating system, and finish them in various secondary operations (e.g., trim, abrasive belt sanding, grinding, and shot-blast). The touted benefit of the process was not so much the quality of the incoming powder (which I'm sure was good) but the efficient--one stroke--forging process yielding a fully-dense, high-strength product.

I'd guess a large-scale knife manufacturing process could do the same thing with some tweaks, but I'm really not knowledgeable on state of the technology today--especially not the economics of it.
 
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