Australia’s only manufacturer of high tensile and abrasion-resistant quenched and tempered steel plate says it owes its success to the benefits of local knowledge, imbued with a successful combination of resilience and formability.
With its heritage firmly grounded in the mining and manufacturing sectors, Bisalloy Steel provides its highly sought after products to a range of markets, including defence, energy, mineral processing, structural engineering, and transport.
Given the battering that plant and equipment takes at the hands of earth, rocks and so forth, wear resistance is a key measure when comparing the quality of steel plate products in this sector.
Due to their excellent wear resistant properties, Bisalloy Wear grades have been used to make dump truck bodies, mining and earthmoving buckets, tipper bodies, and liner plates for chutes and hoppers.
In addition to wear resistance, other factors like weldability and formability are also important when comparing wear grade steel plate. The wear resistance of steel is primarily determined by the amount of carbon and alloys it contains.
High carbon and alloy contents can enhance wear resistance but at the same time the carbon equivalent of the steel
will increase.
As it requires a high pre-heating temperature during thermal cutting and welding, steel with a high carbon equivalent also tends to be difficult to work with. Therefore, in the absence of the right R&D efforts, wear resistance comes at the cost of less workability.
The important thing to note here is this trade-off – between wear resistance and workability – is not necessarily directly proportionate. Through careful development, it is possible to manufacture products that achieve both characteristics. This is precisely what Bisalloy has done.
Through its exacting research and testing efforts, the company has struck the right balance between durability and workability and is able to deliver the extractive industry with the wear grade steel plate products it needs.
Within the extractive sector, the company’s Bisalloy Wear steel plates have found use in a broad range of products including demolition and ground engaging tools, earthmoving buckets, dragline buckets, wear plates, chutes, dump truck bodies, storage bins and hoppers.
Bisalloy Wear steel plates are specifically designed, hot-rolled and heat-treated to handle these demanding applications. The four core products in the range have been developed to maximise properties such as wear resistance, while also meeting the challenging workability and weldability requirements demanded by miners.
Bisalloy Wear 400 steel has proven itself to be a highly versatile, through hardened, abrasion-resistant steel plate with the ability to withstand high impact and medium level abrasion applications.
Bisalloy Wear 450 – the “all rounder” of the range – offers the optimum combination of hardness, impact resistance and formability for wear applications. Combining well balanced toughness with excellent formability and weldability, Wear 450 is suitable for heavy industrial tasks like dragline excavation and is also commonly used to manufacture dump truck bodies.
One of Bisalloy Steels’ first ever products – Bisalloy Wear 500 – has been continually manufactured in Australia for more than 35 years. Through a very high hardness and abrasion-resistant steel plate, it is readily weldable and formable, and therefore suitable for use in a range of applications.
At the other end of the scale, in terms of its introduction to the market, the final product in the range – Bisalloy Wear 600 – was developed just seven years ago. With a nominal Brinell hardness of 600 HBW, it is extremely wear-resistant and recommended for liners in chutes and hoppers that need to carry high hardness rocks and minerals.
The success of these products has been made possible by Bisalloy’s close collaboration with leaders in science, technology and steel manufacture on intensive research programs, and it involves knowledge of – and experience in – Australian industry.
By forming partnerships with local businesses, Bisalloy can develop a deep understanding of their needs and customise value-added products and services to ensure their success.
The demands of high strength and high hardness steels and their subsequently stringent process routes have made it possible for Bisalloy to compete successfully in this highly specialised market. Further, as the company is local, and has all its resources in Australia, it can offer levels of development support that overseas competitors cannot easily match.
Bisalloy’s collaborative approach and proximity to its Australian clients puts it in a solid position to handle engineering problems as they arise. Combined with an understanding of local conditions and Australian business culture, this is a benefit that overseas competitors cannot replicate.
There is no substitute for resources on the ground, being on-hand (or at least close by) to deal with problems as they arise, and the creativity that well functioning business relationships engender.
Over the years Bisalloy’s proximity, along with its demonstrated commitment to the Australian extractive sector, has made it possible for the company to achieve important incremental product improvements and meet its customers’ performance requirements.
Source: Bisalloy Steel Group