Introduction to Metallurgy

Explore the history and properties of metals, with emphasis on steel, alloying with carbon, heat treatment, and crystal structure, to help manufacturing professionals engage with metallurgists.

Gary Pace introduces metallurgy, covering where metals come from and a brief history of metals, and shows metallurgy's role in industrial, welding shop, and machine shop contexts.

Discover the fundamentals of metallurgy, from the periodic table and metals versus nonmetals to carbon steel, alloys, and the three branches of metallurgy: mineral processing, extractive, and physical.

Explore the three general steps from ore to metal: mining, mineral processing, and extractive metallurgy, and how ore becomes iron or steel for everyday items like pots and cars.

Download two resources: a periodic table of elements and a glossary of terms, attached to this video, to reference iron, carbon, alloying elements, nondestructive testing, welding, and heat treating.

Trace the shift from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age and then to the Iron Age, explaining bronze’s alloying with tin and iron’s greater availability and forgeability.

Trace the iron age to carbon steel as iron oxide with charcoal becomes bloom, slag is removed, and carbon infusion hardens iron into wrought iron and edge-holding material.

Trace the journey from bloom iron to steel through carburization, blast furnaces, and pig iron, then unlock mass production with the Bessemer and open hearth processes that transformed steel's ubiquity.

Determine what physical metallurgy covers—from solidified alloys to end use—by examining mechanical, electrical, thermal, chemical, and magnetic properties driven by atomic structure and phase transformations.

Understand density and heat transfer rates in material design, then explore thermal expansion, melting point, corrosion resistance, and key processing properties like castability, weldability, machinability, and formability.

Explore the periodic table fundamentals for metallurgy, including iron, carbon, and key alloying elements; learn how steels and stainless steels gain strength and corrosion resistance through controlled alloying.

Explore how a material test report defines a grade like 1018 steel, detailing carbon content, alloying elements, and a heat's chemical analysis to verify conformance with industry standards.

Discover how iron and carbon form steel, exploring crystal structures—bcc, fcc, and bct—through heating and quenching to produce martensite and hardened steel, with carbon controlling properties.

Examine mechanical properties of metals, including hardness, strength, ductility, elasticity, fatigue, and creep strength, and how bend tests and hardness scales reveal weldability and tensile and carbon-related effects.

Explore hardness testing with Rockwell B scale, 100 kg load and 1.59 mm ball, and how to verify the tester using a hardness master and prepare the part surface.

Explore impact strength, or notch toughness, in steels and irons, using Charpy impact testing to measure energy absorption and the ductile to brittle transition temperature.

Trace how iron ore becomes steel: blast furnace produces pig iron, then basic oxygen or electric arc furnaces refine carbon and impurities, with scrap iron and alloying shaping final steel.

Explore alloying in metallurgy, including interstitial and substitutional mechanisms, carbon content effects on iron and steel, and examples like solder, brass, bronze, and gold-silver.

Explore two attached reference pdfs on metallurgy and heat treatment that cover definitions, microstructures, phase diagrams, and heat-treat concepts like quenching and tempering to advance your understanding.

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