| Beryllium Copper | (english) An alloy of copper and 2-3% beryllium with optionally fractional percentages of nickel or cobalt. Alloys of this series show remarkable age-hardening properties and an ultimate hardness of about 400 Brinell (Rockwell C43). Because of such hardness and good electrical conductivity, beryllium-copper is used in electrical switches, springs, etc. |
| Black Oil Tempered Spring Steel Strip (Scaleless Blue) | (english) A flat cold rolled usually .70/.80 medium high carbon steel strip, blue-black in color, which has been quenched in oil and drawn to desired hardness. While it looks and acts much like blue tempered spring steel and carries a Rockwell hardness of C44/47, it has not been polished and is lower in carbon content. Used for less exacting requirements than clock spring steel, such as snaps, lock springs, hold down springs, trap springs, etc. It will take a more severe bend before fracture than will clock spring, but it does not have the same degree of spring-back. |
| Black Plate | (english) A light weight or a thin uncoated steel sheet or strip so called because of its dark oxide coloring prior to pickling. It is manufactured by two different processes. (1) Form sheet bar on single stand sheet mills or sheet mills in tandem. This method is now almost obsolete. (2) On modern, high speed continuous tandem cold reduction mills from coiled hot rolled pickled wide strip into ribbon wound coils to finished gage. Sizes range from 12 to 32 in width, and in thicknesses from 55 lbs. to 275 lbs. base box weight. It is used either as is for stampings, or may be enameled or painted or tin or terne coated. |
| Blow Back | (english) A coating defect consisting of a lower coating film weight on the bottom of the coated sheet caused by high velocity air in the oven. Blow back usually occurs with high solids coatings which have little solvent to evaporate and "set" the film. |
| Boron Steels | (english) The addition of boron in the range 0.0005-0.005% to certain steels increases the hardenability. A range of boron steels is now listed in the current BS 970 and are widely used for the production of cold headed fastenings. |
| Brinell Hardness Testing | (english) Method of determining the hardness of materials; involves impressing a hardened ball of specified diameter into the material surface at a known pressure (10-mm ball, 500-kg load for aluminum alloys). The Brinell hardness number results from calculations involving the load and the spherical area of the ball impression. Direct-reading testing are generally used for routine inspection of forgings, and as a heat treat control function. |
| Brittle Inter-metallic Layer | (english) An iron-zinc alloy layer formed between the steel substrate and the free zinc of galvanized coatings. |
| Broaching | (english) Smoothing machined holes or outside surfaces of castings by drawing pushing on or more broaches (special cutting tools) through the roughed out hole. |
| Bronze | (english) An alloy containing 90% copper and 10% tin. Used for screws, wire, hardware, wear plates, bushings and springs; it is somewhat stronger than copper and brass and has equal or better ductility. |
| Busheling | (english) A widely traded form of steel scrap consisting of sheet clips and stampings from metal production. Bushel baskets were used to collect the material through World War II, giving rise to the term. |