American Elements: AE Alloys Supplier and Technical Information

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Safety data, research and properties for AE AlloyT materials are provided below. American Elements is a manufacturer and supplier specializing in both elemental metals and "mixes" or alloys of certain metals which have proven uses in aerospace, electronics, food packaging and structural materials.

The history of alloy manufacturing dates to prehistory when man first discovered that iron could be strengthened and better formed with the addition of carbon to create "wrought iron" and copper could be better formed and crafted if tin were added thus beginning the "Bronze Age" and the first Neolithic metal tools, cooking utensils, and jewelry produced from rudimentary steel and bronze. The first wrought iron contained no more than 0.5% carbon. Bronze is copper with up to 12% tin added. While alloy technology has advanced significantly since the Bronze Age, bronze is still the metal of choice for large bell manufacturing. Brass was also discovered during prehistory when early smelters added zinc to copper to produce a shinier metal than bronze which was less subject to corrosion. Further early advancements in alloy development included the addition of zinc to bronze as a deoxidizing agent to create "Gun Metal" which would later be used to produce the first cannons.

It was the early Romans and Asians that began the bifurcation of alloy technology development into a search for soft metals capable of binding and sealing metallic parts and a search for hard high tensile strength metals for structural and tool applications.

Early Hard Alloys. It is thought that the first mass production of high carbon iron to form what we call today "Carbon Steel" occurred in India around 200 BC in the form of "Cast Iron". The technology was passed along the trade routes to Rome around the first century AD when cast iron production expanded dramatically well into the middle ages.

Early Soft Alloys. The Romans were the first to discover that when certain metals are melted together in specific percentages (i.e. alloyed) the resulting mixed metal had a lower melting temperature than either of the starting elemental metals! This newly developed alloy is called a "Eutectic". The first eutectic produced by the Romans was created when lead was mixed with tin to form what we now call a "Solid Solution". Lead melts at 327ºC and tin melts at 232ºC, but an alloy of 40% tin and 60% lead melts at below 190ºC! Not only did this alloy melt at very low temperatures, it was found to have an affinity with and adhere to most known other metals. This allowed the Romans to attach most any elemental metal part to a part made of the same or another metal. The result was a revolution in what could be crafted from metal from ornate jewelry to architectural hardware to bridges. Today we call this Roman discovery "solder" from the Roman word solidus meaning "to make solid".

The development of hard and soft metals using alloys did not further advance until the 19th century when a technological revolution took place with the development of modern steel and advanced low temperature high strength solders.

Moder Hard Alloys. It was Hanry Bessemer who first developed the means to mass produce modern steel in the mid-19th century. Experimenters began to alloy iron-carbon with other metals to produce steel with novel properties. In the early 19th century, Pierre Berthier discovered that adding small amounts of chromium metal increased the anti-corrosive properties of the alloy producing the first "Stainless Steel". Today nickel is also contained in most stainless steel alloys.

Structural steel was made stronger with the addition of manganese and other metals such as vanadium, molybdenum and cobalt. In the twentieth century, hard alloy technology lead to the development of "Super Alloys" which are not only strong with high tensile strength but also extremely light or capable of other properties, such as magnetism. With the advent of the aerospace industry, researchers began to develop alloys based on aluminum, titanium and other advanced materials such as scandium/aluminum alloy to produce extremely light high strength low-corrosive structural materials. Magnetic alloys such as "Alnico" which is an alloy of aluminum, nickel and cobalt were developed for use in electric motors.

Modern Soft Alloys. In the early 19th century, Isaac Babbitt developed the first modern solder with exceptional binding and compatibility properties known as "White Metal" due to the whiteness resulting from the addition of Antimony to the traditional 40% tin/60% lead eutectic solder formulation. The antimony added strength though it also made the solder less compatible with aluminum and zinc parts. To overcome this, the lead was replaced by zinc to produce a tin-zinc solders that functioned well with aluminum and zinc parts.

In the twentieth century, public health concerns resulted in the development of "Lead-Free Solders" for such uses as the seams on food cans. The first lead-free solders were tin-antimony solder, but when health concerns were raised regarding antimony, it was replaced with silver to produce tin-silver solders for food packaging and food refrigeration systems. Current low toxicity solders are also based on bismuth compositions. The twentieth century also experienced a leap in solder alloy technology as a result of the electrical and electronic revolutions. Starting with the work of Thomas Edison to today's modern microelectronics, electrically conductive solders and adhesives have experienced constant reinvention. Most modern conductive alloys are based on additions of conductive precious metals, such as platinum, silver and gold to the standard tin-lead compositions.

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