What is Iron often used for? Steel? Machines? Wires? ect ect.?

Question

anymore? what are most of the iron products?

Answer 1

Most iron is converted to steel. Iron is usually too britttle and less consistent (less homogeneous) than steel for use in most applications.

The other common uses of iron are cast iron for engine blocks and ductile iron for water and sewer piping. It is less prone to rusting than steel when installed in the ground although protective coatings will extend the useful life.

Iron is also used in other industrial applications which would not be familiar to most consumers- pump volutes and blower housings.

Iron is not used for wire because iron wire would not be bendable or shapeable. It is brittle and would most likely break during the installation.

Answer 2

Wrought Iron. Wrought iron is made by burning the carbon from molten iron and then putting the product through hammering and rolling operations. The product contains some 1—3% slag and less than 0.1% carbon. The material is very soft and ductile and is easily forge welded. It is used principally for rivets, welded steam and water pipes, and for general forging purposes. Its most advantageous properties are its ductility and resistance to corrosion.
Cast Iron (1, 14, 15). When the term cast iron is used without a qualifying adjective, gray east iron, spoken of as gray iron, is meant. In general, cast iron contains so much carbon (2.6—3.6% usually) that it is not malleable at any temperature. In gray iron, the excess carbon is uncombined, and a fracture is gray.
The ASTM, in specification A 48-46, has classified gray iron according to minimum tensile strength (8). Thus, a number “30 gray iron” will have a. standard test strength of not less than 30,000 psi (30 ksi). The higher-strength cast irons will contain typical alloys.
Gray iron has excellent wearing properties which are improved by certain alloys and by heat treatment (including flame and induction hardening). Thus, it is widely used for cylinder blocks, brake drums, gears, machine tool ways, and in general where there is metal-to-metal contact and relative motion. The lower-strength varieties and all grades in the annealed state are easily machined. Gray iron is more resistant to many kinds of corrosion than are ordinà1ry or low-alloy steels (1). It has much greater damping capacity (for vibrations) than steel, which suggests its use under some vibrating conditions. It is being successfully used in crank- shafts, as in automobile engines. Being the cheapest of metals, ordinary (low-strength) gray iron is the most widely used of all cast metals. Its principal disadvantages are its brittleness and lack of toughness, but these factors are often not significant.
In white cast iron (the fracture is “white”), most of the carbon is combined chemically with the iron, and as a result, the metal is very hard. If the combined carbon is as much as 1.5%, the cast iron may be difficult or impossible to machine. When an extremely hard surface is desired, white cast iron, called chilled iron, is intentionally produced by using an iron plate in the mold to cause rapid cooling of the surface. The rapid cooling does not allow time enough for the carbon to be released as free carbon. Such a surface may be finished only by grinding and is suitable for car wheels, rolls, etc.
Malleable Iron (1, 17). Malleable iron is heat-treated white cast iron. The white cast iron is obtained not by chilling, as mentioned above, hut by using the proper composition in the melt. The heat treatment of the white cast iron, in which substantially all of the carbon is combined in the form of iron carbide, is an annealing, called malleablizing, which takes some six days, and during which the white iron changes to ferrite and free (or temper) carbon.
Malleable iron produces strong, ductile, and easily machined castings at low cost in quantity. Best results are obtained on relatively thin sections. If the part is thicker than about 3 in., there will be difficulty in producing a white-iron casting devoid of uncombined primary graphite. Since it is necessary that all the carbon in the original casting be combined carbon for the best results, malleable castings are generally produced in sections of from 1/8 to 2 in. thick. See grades 32510 and 35018.

Answer 3

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe (Latin: ferrum) and atomic number 26. Iron is a group 8 and period 4 metal. Iron and nickel are notable for being the final elements produced by stellar nucleosynthesis, and thus the heaviest elements which do not require a supernova or similarly cataclysmic event for formation. Iron and nickel are therefore the most abundant metals in metallic meteorites and in the dense-metal cores of planets such as Earth.

Iron is the most used of all the metals, comprising 95% of all the metal tonnage produced worldwide. Its combination of low cost and high strength make it indispensable, especially in applications like automobiles, the hulls of large ships, and structural components for buildings. Steel is the best known alloy of iron, and some of the forms that iron can take include:

Pig iron has 4% – 5% carbon and contains varying amounts of contaminants such as sulfur, silicon and phosphorus. Its only significance is that of an intermediate step on the way from iron ore to cast iron and steel.
Cast iron contains 2% – 4.0% carbon , 1% – 6% silicon , and small amounts of manganese. Contaminants present in pig iron that negatively affect the material properties, such as sulfur and phosphorus, have been reduced to an acceptable level. It has a melting point in the range of 1420–1470 K, which is lower than either of its two main components, and makes it the first product to be melted when carbon and iron are heated together. Its mechanical properties vary greatly, dependent upon the form carbon takes in the alloy. 'White' cast irons contain their carbon in the form of cementite, or iron carbide. This hard, brittle compound dominates the mechanical properties of white cast irons, rendering them hard, but unresistant to shock. The broken surface of a white cast iron is full of fine facets of the broken carbide, a very pale, silvery, shiny material, hence the appellation. In grey iron the carbon exists free as fine flakes of graphite, and also renders the material brittle due to the stress-raising nature of the sharp edged flakes of graphite. A newer variant of grey iron, referred to as ductile iron is specially treated with trace amounts of magnesium to alter the shape of graphite to spheroids, or nodules, vastly increasing the toughness and strength of the material.
Carbon steel contains between 0.4% and 1.5% carbon, with small amounts of manganese, sulfur, phosphorus, and silicon.
Wrought iron contains less than 0.2% carbon. It is a tough, malleable product, not as fusible as pig iron. It has a very small amount of carbon, a few tenths of a percent. If honed to an edge, it loses it quickly. Wrought iron is characterised, especially in old samples, by the presence of fine 'stringers' or filaments of slag entrapped in the metal. Wrought iron does not rust particularly quickly when used outdoors. It has largely been replaced by mild steel for "wrought iron" gates and blacksmithing. Mild steel does not have the same corrosion resistance but is cheaper and more widely available.
Alloy steels contain varying amounts of carbon as well as other metals, such as chromium, vanadium, molybdenum, nickel, tungsten, etc. They are used for structural purposes, as their alloy content raises their cost and necessitates justification of their use. Recent developments in ferrous metallurgy have produced a growing range of microalloyed steels, also termed 'HSLA' or high-strength, low alloy steels, containing tiny additions to produce high strengths and often spectacular toughness at minimal cost.
Iron(III) oxides are used in the production of magnetic storage media in computers. They are often mixed with other compounds, and retain their magnetic properties in solution.
The main drawback to iron and steel is that pure iron, and most of its alloys, suffer badly from rust if not protected in some way. Painting, galvanization, plastic coating and bluing are some techniques used to protect iron from rust by excluding water and oxygen or by sacrificial protection.

Answer 4

I'm familiar with "etc." - the abbreviation for "et cetera"
but I have no clue what "ect ect." is -- can anyone help?