Part VII - The 1966 Howe Memorial Lecture-Iron and Steel Division Vanadium in High-Speed Steel

The development of an alloy system, high-speed steel, is used as an example of the progress of physical metallurgy. Tracing the history of men and their thoughts as they studied and invented and modified these materials, the story of high-speed steel since the 1890's is seen to be a long, slow, but steady progression of achievements. Today's multiplicity of high-speed steels are the result. Data are presented on quantitative metallography of carbides in high-speed steel with high vanadium content using the QTM instrument. Grindability as well as mechanical properties are related to the content of excess MC and M6C carbides in a series of high-speed steels and the newer matrix steels. These emphasize the present state of knowledge and show the current stages of thought that may affect the development in succeeding years. It is a great thrill for me, an ex-research metallurgist and ex-practicing metallurgical engineer, to speak to an audience currently engaged in both pursuits on the occasion of the 43rd Howe Memorial Lecture before the Iron and Steel Division of the AIME. I shall not review Henry Marion Howe's distinguished career, so adequately reviewed in Maxwell Gensamer's contribution in the 1965 AIME History of Metallurgy, except to point out that, while leading the life of an intellectual, he worked as a practicing research metallurgist and a practicing metallurgical engineer for significant periods of time and contributed greatly in both areas. For those of you who believe, as I do, that in the intellectual activity of metallurgy we are blessed with an intimate mixture of science and engineering (see Mehl's 1960 Howe Lecture), we might recall that Howe, while pursuing a life of writing and teaching in later years, served as the first Chairman of the Division of Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences. That metallurgists were called upon then to lead an engineering recognition movement is perhaps related to the strong part played by the AIME and its members in the recent establishment of a National Academy of Engineering and to the fact that a metallurgist is its head, 47 years after Howe served. I stress these engineering aspects for I wish to talk about a metallurgical engineering subject today. Alloy systems, physical metallurgy, and steel blended with an historical perspective and a report on new techniques to improve the old will, I trust, be of sufficient interest to bring these lectures back to the physical-metallurgy banner from which they have departed for 4 years. Those process metallurgists, open-hearth fiends, and physical chemists among you will just have to be patient. The development of an alloy system is the engineering application of scientific thought and fact. There are many interesting alloy systems, developed to a high degree of technology and sophistication over the past 40 to 70 years. These systems are bound together and related by a similar set of characteristics. For example, stainless steels are a system in which the members are related by a high chromium content which gives a corrosion-resistant characteristic. A subfamily in this system would be austenitic steels