Ductile iron is often used as an alternative to plain carbon steel because it has similar strengths and excellent machining properties. Many companies have made the switch from steel to ductile iron to reduce costs while maintaining or improving the quality of their machined parts. Dura-Bar Ductile iron offers a number of advantages over steel including:
Gray iron has a flake graphite structure making it a good alternative to traditional iron castings because of its high quality, consistent machinability and dense fine-grained microstructure. With Dura-Bar gray iron, there are no defects like those typically found in castings, such as porosity, slag, hard spots, shrinkage, etc. Dura-Bar gray iron can be used to produce parts more quickly, with less impact on tool life and with excellent surface finishes.
Ni-Resist Iron has nickel and copper added to produce a matrix of austenite with alloy carbide. Dura-Bar Ni-Resist Iron provides excellent corrosion resistance making it ideal for use in marine applications and other harsh environments, the material exhibits corrosion resistant properties between cast iron and austenitic stainless steel.