Practical Problems in the Metallography of Steel

Abstract

SINCE Sorby in 1864 established the all-important fact that steel must be regarded as a crystallised igneous rock, his work has been greatly expanded by the international labours of many able microscopists. Much of the work done, however, has been of academical rather than of practical interest, and busy steel works' metallurgists, appalled by the rapid growth of constituents ending in “ite”, of “eutectics” and of solid solutions of carbon or carbides in unisolated allotropic modifications of iron, are already beginning to ask themselves the question, Is micrographic analysis going to be of any real use to us, and, if so, in what direction? The present article is an attempt to very briefly answer the above questions.