Learn about silicon steel

Learn about silicon steel

1. What is silicon steel?
Silicon steel, known as a handicraft in steel, is a silicon alloy steel with a silicon content of 1.0~4.5% and a carbon content of less than 0.08%. Also refers to Fe-Si soft magnetic alloy, also known as electrical steel. The mass percentage of Si in silicon steel is 0.5%~6.5%.

2. What are the properties of silicon steel?
It has the characteristics of high magnetic permeability, low coercivity, and large resistivity, so the hysteresis loss and eddy current loss are small. Mainly used as magnetic materials in motors, transformers, electrical appliances and electrical instruments. In order to meet the needs of punching and shearing when manufacturing electrical appliances, a certain degree of plasticity is also required. In order to improve the magnetic induction performance and reduce hysteresis loss, the content of harmful impurities is required to be as low as possible, and the plate shape is required to be smooth and the surface quality is good.

3. What is silicon steel used for?

Grain-oriented silicon steel uses:
An important soft magnetic material in the military and electronic industries. It is mainly used in high-frequency transformers, high-power magnetic amplifiers, pulse generators, general yoke coils, inductors, storage and memory components, switches and control components, magnetic shielding and Transformers operating under vibration and radiation conditions. Compared with other materials such as ferrite and amorphous materials, the iron core can be made very small due to the high saturation magnetic induction and high magnetic permeability of the 3% Si-Fe thin strip. Because it is a cold-rolled strip, it has a smooth surface, small differences between the same plates, good plate shape, and good processing performance. It can be made into iron cores of various shapes and specifications such as CD type, ring type, and rectangular type. It has a wide range of applications. Wide frequency range (50H-20KH).

Uses of hot rolled silicon steel:
Hot-rolled electrical steel is mainly used for some small motors and micro-motors, such as some low-quality washing machines and range hood motors. There are also some high-specification and low-efficiency motors that can be hot-rolled 450.

Applications of cold rolled non-oriented silicon steel:
Basically non-oriented silicon steel is used in the motor. Gap motors (water pumps) mainly use cold-rolled, non-oriented, uncoated silicon steel. Electric welding machine motors are divided into two types: DC motors and AC motors. DC motors can use uncoated cold-rolled silicon steel, and AC motors mainly use coated ones. 600 non-oriented silicon steel.
Motors for air compressors and air pressure pumps can also use uncoated cold-rolled silicon steel.
The micro motors used in small household appliances mainly use non-oriented 470. The main motor used in CNC machine tools is 470. Motors for air conditioner compressors mainly use 600, 800, 1000, and 1300 motors. It mainly depends on the requirements of the air conditioner manufacturer. Generally, the higher the brand, the higher the quality of the air conditioner.
Refrigerator motors: high-quality ones use 350, higher-quality ones use 470, and ordinary manufacturers mainly use high-grade 600 (Baosteel, Sinosteel, Posco).
Silicon steel occupies an extremely important position in electrification construction. In a sense, the amount of silicon steel sheets used in a country can measure the degree of electrification in the country. Therefore, in the long run, electrical steel has great development prospects. At present, electrical steel is moving towards replacing heat with cold, and cold-rolled silicon steel is developing towards high grade and low iron loss, low grade and high magnetic induction.