SS 304 Bolt VS Iron Bolt

304 stainless steel bolts or iron bolts, which is better? Simply speaking, whether ss 304 bolts are good or iron bolts is good are very one-sided. The bolts of the two materials have their own unique usage scenarios. Iron bolts are generally suitable for infrastructure, factories, large machinery, and railways. Sometimes they are used with anti-corrosion coatings to achieve a longer service life. 304 stainless steel bolts are used in a wider range of environmental protection equipment, medical equipment, communication equipment, electronic products, petrochemicals, open-air, outdoor decoration, etc.

304 Stainless Steel Bolts with Excellent Corrosion Resistance

The biggest advantage of stainless steel bolts is their excellent corrosion resistance. Taking the most commonly used 304 stainless steel bolts as an example, they can resist corrosion by air, water, acid, alkali salt, or other media. 304 bolt is durable and not easy to rust.

In terms of anti-corrosion performance, stainless steel bolts are obviously better than iron bolts. Because the corrosion resistance of stainless steel depends on the chromium inside, which reacts with oxygen in the air to form a protective layer of chromium oxide to protect stainless steel screws from corrosion. If the chromium oxide protective layer is damaged due to impact or other reasons, the chromium inside will automatically react with the oxygen in the air, and continue to generate chromium oxide protection screws.

For iron bolts, although there are surface treatments such as blackening and electroplating, the anti-corrosion performance is also good, but once the surface coating is damaged, because there is no ability to automatically regenerate the protective layer, it will quickly rust. Therefore, iron bolts are suitable for scenarios that do not have high requirements for corrosion, while 304 stainless steel bolts are suitable for scenarios with high requirements for corrosion protection.

Other Excellent Properties of SS 304 Bolts

Mechanical behavior

Stainless steel bolts are made of stainless steel bolt wire rods. Stainless steel has good mechanical properties such as anti-rust, anti-corrosion, and high-temperature resistance, so of course, stainless steel bolts also have these good mechanical properties.

Mechanical property

Regardless of stainless steel plate or heat-resistant steel plate, austenitic steel plates have the best comprehensive properties, with sufficient strength, excellent plasticity, and low hardness, which is one of the reasons why they are widely used. Austenitic stainless steel is similar to most other metal materials, its tensile strength, yield strength, and hardness increase with the decrease of temperature, and plasticity decreases with the decrease of temperature. Its tensile strength increases uniformly in the temperature range of 15~80°C. More importantly, as the temperature decreases, the impact toughness of stainless steel screws decreases slowly, and there is no brittle transition temperature. Therefore, stainless steel can maintain sufficient plasticity and toughness at low temperatures.

Heat resistance

Heat resistance refers to both the oxidation resistance or gas medium corrosion resistance at high temperature, that is, thermal stability, and at the same time, it has sufficient strength at high temperature, that is, thermal strength.