What is cast iron? What is the difference between cast iron and ordinary iron?
Pig iron can also be divided into ordinary pig iron and alloy pig iron. The former includes pig iron and cast iron, the latter mainly ferromanganese and ferrosilicon. Alloy pig iron is used as auxiliary material for steelmaking, such as deoxidizer and alloy element additive. Ordinary pig iron accounted for more than 98% of the blast furnace smelting products, and smelting iron and steel accounted for more than 80% of the ordinary pig iron in our country at present. With the improvement of industrialization level, this proportion will gradually increase.
Pig iron is produced directly from the blast furnace crude iron, according to its use can be divided into two categories of pig iron and cast iron. Traditionally pig iron is called pig iron and cast pig iron is referred to as cast iron. Cast iron by forging, metamorphism, spheroidizing method can change the internal structure and improve its mechanical properties, therefore, cast iron can be divided into white cast iron, gray iron, malleable iron, ductile iron and special cast iron etc..
Pig iron and cast iron are two distinct and closely related concepts.Pig iron is a carbon iron containing carbon 2.11%-6.67% and contains many non iron impurities. The impurity elements of pig iron are mainly silicon, sulfur, manganese, phosphorus and so on. Raw iron is hard and brittle, lacks toughness, has almost no plastic deformation ability, so it can not be machined by forging, rolling and drawing. But with high silicon cast iron (gray iron casting) and good cutting performance.
