We pride ourselves on providing the best quality products, using only the most reputable manufacturers from all over the world including Germany, Italy and China.

It comes as no surprise that cheap inferior products have made their way into the Australian market. There is an old adage that you get what you pay for, and this is certainly the case when it comes to stainless steel fasteners. Unfortunately some suppliers are unknowingly purchasing inferior low nickel-content products and offering them to the market as a cheap high quality product.

As we are the “stainless steel fastener specialist ", we decided to conduct some market research with regards to the quality of stainless fasteners being supplied to the Australian market.

We discovered that many factories that produce the cheap products are equipped with out-of-date machinery. Their products contain only 0.57% nickel but some of them are marked with A2-70 (head marking for material type 304, means 8-10.5% nickel as regulated in ISO 3506-1). Currently these low nickel products that are claimed to be type 304 products, are showing up almost everywhere. To cut down costs and offer “attractive” prices, some manufacturers lower the percentage of nickel, which contributes to more than half of the raw material costs associated with stainless steel fasteners. Compared to standard 304 products, these low nickel products may have a nice appearance, but start to rust and corrode in a short period of time. Without using these products for a period of time or testing the material on an analysis equipment (such as a spectrometer), buyers have great difficulty to verify the quality of these products.

Our findings.................

We recently bought some samples of stainless steel fasteners from the Australian marketplace. These samples were selected at random. After receiving these samples, they were each tested to check the chemical composition. We discovered that each sample didn’t comply with Austenitic Stainless Steels type 304 standard even though all samples were marked with A2-70 (type A2 (18-8) - refer table below). We found it to be very difficult to judge the quality of each sample by just looking at it. Without any analysis equipment, buyers are not able to make a chemical analysis.

In the Nitric acid test, samples were boiled in 65% nitric acid solution for 48 hours. To decide the percentage of intercrystalline corrosion (g/(m2.h)), our lab measured the surface areas and weights before and after the tests. After being boiled in the solution for 1.5 hour, the colour of sample 1 (Ni=0.503%) started to become black. The colour of sample 2 (Ni=6.99%) becomes black in 4 hours. Standard 304 (A2 (18-8)) product (Ni=8.91%) started to change its colour into yellow and gradually started to corrode in the 10th hour. In the end, sample 1 is seriously corroded.

Final results indicate that A2 (18-8) sample (corrosion: 2.437%), Sample 1 (corrosion: 12.32%) and Sample 2 (corrosion: 2.585%) - refer below.

As a conclusion, products that don’t comply with standards (such as ISO 3506-1) will not have the required performance longevity. Therefore, we urge buyers to be careful when purchasing their stainless fasteners, as there could be a bomb ticking away in your current stainless stock holdings.