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Recycling steel is a medical priority!

By Rob Ellis

It’s no secret that we find steel an absolutely fascinating material – not only does it have almost endless possibilities, it’s also almost endlessly recyclable! Some materials have a limited number of times that they’re suitable for recycling; paper, for instance, can only be recycled around 6 times due to its structure. The cellulose chains that paper is made from get shorter and shorter every time it’s recycled, meaning that after around 6 times, they’re too short to be reused for more paper. Steel doesn’t have this problem; there’s no shortening of its structure and no problem with using the... [read more]

D2 for tools!

By Rob Ellis

There’s always a right tool for the job, and more often than not, it needs the right steel to make that tool. Tool steel grades have some variance in them, depending on what the final intended purpose is going to be, but D2 steel is one of the more interesting examples, simply due to how well it’s able to perform where other materials would fail. Speaking from a technical point of view, D2 steel is interesting because it’s a high carbon, high chromium steel that has high toughness and resistance to wear. Obviously this is useful for items like knives... [read more]

Changing our behaviour could make steel part of the green solution

By Rob Ellis

Environmental issues are becoming ever more in focus and a higher priority on the agenda, whether it’s for the customer in the supermarket, the supermarket itself or even the national Government. Reducing the damage to the planet is the highest priority it’s ever been and one of the biggest trend is reducing single use plastics. Since the BBC programme Blue Planet showed how much plastic waste ends up in the ocean and can take centuries to disappear, there have been attempts to remove single use plastics from our lives and switch to reusable or recyclable products. This has the immediate... [read more]

Steel parts – from nothing!

By Rob Ellis

There are a significant number of people who were told when they were growing up that the future was going to be all laser beams, flying cars and robot helpers. While many people are still irritated that Back To The Future style hoverboards are already four years late (and counting), every so often something happens that makes you feel that maybe those predictions from years ago weren’t so off the mark. The world of 3D printing fits very neatly into that realm – after all, it’s a robotic arm, equipped with a laser beam, creating objects out of what appears... [read more]

Stainless Steel Is Now Literally A Space Age Material!

By Rob Ellis

We at West Yorkshire Steel are big fans of big engineering. We find it fascinating that people require vehicles that stand 30 feet high, or the amount of scientific knowledge that’s needed to drill into the sea bed for oil. There’s one area of engineering that is so large, so futuristic and so complex that many people don’t think of it even as engineering – and it even has its own idiom as exceptionally difficult; “it’s not rocket science!” To this day we still view rocket science in this light, even though the principles of the technology are cracking on... [read more]