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Steel Knowledge Centre

Buying guides, material comparisons and process notes written for the people who have to specify the steel and sign off the order.

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Buying Guide

Buying Guide Articles

Black curved ballistic armor plate on a white background

How to Buy Armor Steel

Buying armor steel comes down to six questions: what ammunition you have to stop, what weight the protected product can carry, what hardness

Large rusty steel pipes stacked in a yard beneath a gantry crane

Steel Pipe Schedule and Wall Thickness Guide

A schedule number is a wall thickness class, not a dimension. For a given outside diameter the schedule decides how much steel is in the wal

Empty tinplate cans with gold and silver lacquered surfaces

Tinplate Temper and Coating Weight Guide

Tinplate temper controls how stiff and how formable the plate is, and tin coating weight controls how much protection the tin layer gives th

Comparison

Comparison Articles

Steel plates and sheets stacked in an open storage yard

AR400 vs AR500 vs AR600 Wear Plate

AR400, AR500 and AR600 are the same quenched and tempered abrasion resistant alloy plate at three hardness levels, supplied in 2 to 100mm th

Rows of green pre-painted steel coils stored indoors

GI GL and PPGI Coated Steel Coil Compared

GI is zinc coated coil, GL is aluminum zinc coated coil, and PPGI and PPGL are the same two substrates with the paint system already applied

bundles of steel pipes and bars stacked along a warehouse wall

Hot Rolled vs Cold Drawn Carbon Steel Round Bars

Hot rolled round bar is rolled above about 1000 degrees Celsius, carries mill scale and holds dimensional tolerances of roughly plus or minu

large bright steel coil lying on a warehouse floor beside more coils

Hot Rolled and Cold Rolled Steel Coil Compared

Hot rolled coil is rolled above the recrystallization temperature and comes off the mill with a scaled surface and a wide gauge range. Cold

Seamless vs Welded Steel Pipe

Seamless steel pipe is a hollow section with no joint around it, made without a weld line, and is specified where the pressure duty or the w

Material Guide

Material Guide Articles

Cutting table with parts burned out of a large steel plate

Choosing Wear Resistant Steel Plate for Ball Mills

A ball mill does not wear evenly, so it is not built from one material. The shell is high strength low alloy steel with a plate thickness of

rust colored weathering steel panel with laser cut scroll pattern

Corten Weathering Steel Specification Guide

Corten weathering steel is a low alloy atmospheric corrosion resistant steel that sits between carbon steel and stainless steel and forms a

Process Guide

Process Guide Articles

Blue coated steel pipes stacked in bundles in an outdoor yard

Export Packing and Loading for Steel Products

Steel that arrives rusted, bent or short shipped costs more than the freight saved on thin packing. Coil, plate and pipe each need a differe

How to Read a Mill Test Certificate

A mill test certificate is the document that ties a delivered batch of steel back to the grade and standard on your purchase order. Read it

Application Briefs

How These Materials Get Specified

Engineering notes on duty, failure modes and grade selection, built from published product data rather than named customer projects.

Ballistic Plate for Vehicle Armoring

Ballistic steel plate is the hard skin on money transport vehicles riot vehicles armored personnel carriers and combat vehicles, and the sam

Galvanized steel pipe bundles stacked outdoors in a storage yard

Galvanized Tube for Greenhouse and Solar Structures

Galvanized tube is the frame of a greenhouse and the mounting structure under a ground mounted solar array. It forms hoops arches purlins po

Barge hull under construction on blocks inside a shipyard shed

Hull Plate for Small Vessel Shipyards

Hull plate is the shell bottom deck bulkhead and superstructure material for workboats tugs barges pontoons fishing vessels and small coasta

Large-diameter steel pipes laid out in a crane-served factory hall

Line Pipe for Oil and Gas Transmission

Line pipe carries oil natural gas and water between a wellhead a station and a terminal, and the same pipe families are bought for plant pip

Tinplate for Food Can Makers

Tinplate is the body end and lid material for food cans, and the same coil and sheet feeds pharmaceutical packaging commodity packaging inst

Wear Plate for Mining Chutes and Liners

Wear plate lines the surfaces that abrasive rock ore coal and clinker slide across on their way through a plant. It goes into transfer chute

Questions Buyers Ask

About the Knowledge Centre

Who writes these articles?

They are written from the product data and specifications published by Shandong Tianyu Metal Products, aimed at the engineer or buyer who has to choose a grade.

Do the articles cover grades you do not sell?

Comparisons mention alternatives so you can see where each option fits, including routes we do not supply. The point is getting the specification right, not steering every question to one product.

What is the difference between an article and an application brief?

Articles explain a material or a process in general. Application briefs walk through how a specific duty gets specified, the failure modes involved and what to send with an enquiry. Neither is a record of a named customer project.

Can you answer a question that is not covered here?

Yes. Send the duty and the sizes over WhatsApp or email. Questions that come up repeatedly get written up and added to this page.

Are the figures in these articles specific to your material?

Figures quoted come from the specification data on our own product pages. Where a point is general metallurgy it is written without attaching a number to it.

Question Not Covered Here

Send it over. If it is worth writing up we will add it to this page.

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