What is CRCA steel?

A. Hi, Harish.

This is information you must get from a steel handbook; you must never ever rely on the internet rumor mill for engineering work!

But it is unusual to be highly concerned about the "ultimate strength" of steel; the "yield strength" is the significant number for, say, 99.9% of all applications because once you reach the yield point, the structure acquires a permanent distortion that greatly limits its usefulness. You might want to know the ultimate strength if you were designing a rupture disk, I suppose. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi, GK. That is an acronym that I hadn't seen used before on this page, but it means "Hot rolled, pickled & oiled". Yes, it should be readily available.

Regards,

A. Hi Biswanath.

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by "post effect" in this context; please re-phrase. Readers want to hear your situation, not a stultifying string of flash-card questions :-)

So please: Who are you? What are you trying to make? What has motivated you to ask this question? Thanks.

Regards,

A. Hi Shyam. Certainly not. Steel has far superior properties to cast iron for many engineering purposes, including ductility rather than brittleness.

Why would you happen to just wonder about this?  :-)

Regards,

Hi Ankit. The ASM Metals Handbook is a great source for every question about the properties of metals, but it's a 20+ volume set costing several thousand dollars. Since your interest seems restricted to alloy and carbon steels, their specialty handbook would probably be ideal.

Your boss may appreciate your sound advice that the company shouldn't try to get by without a steel handbook ... or not :-)
Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi cousin Deepak. Where did you find this term "CACA", and why might want to build elevator cabins and control panels out of it?

I've never heard the term and feel that we're probably wasting time based on an accidentally introduced typo. Stop the madness! Please tell us where you saw this term and why it interests you :-)

Regards,

A. Hi Vipan. I'm sure it's well under 1/16 of an inches to several inches. But what width will you need? That enters into it because the thin gauges will be available in sheets 12 foot wide or more whereas the thicker ones won't be (steel warehouses obviously don't want to stock huge rarely sold single plates of steel that weigh hundreds of tons). Coils are only available to a limited thickness because it's not practical to roll and unroll a 2" thick plate.

Please tell the readers what you think you need . . . please describe your situation. Regards,

A. Hi Gopalsamy. I don't understand what you mean by "CRCA coated with olive drab". Olive drab what? You can't coat plain steel with olive drab chromate, only zinc coated steel can be chromate conversion coated ... so I'm not understanding the difference between what you were using vs. what you are experimenting with.

Zinc coatings do offer cathodic protection to steel, so they should minimize corrosion at cut edges. But bare steel should not be exposed to the elements. Further, galvanizing is not nearly as protective in high humidity application as in low. You may need to turn or roll the cut edges, paint the whole unit, or switch from pre-coated to galvanizing after fabrication. Best of luck!

Regards,

A. Hi Kamlesh. You know what CRCA (steel) is and you know what aluminum is, and that they have very different properties. Steel is heavier but cheaper and stronger so that automobiles are built of steel, but airplanes from aluminum. You know that aluminum is "cleaner" and that cooking grates are built from steel, but the cooking foil to line them from aluminum. That aluminum expands more, so machine tools are made from steel although venetian blinds from aluminum. With hundreds of thousands of different products in the world, each with their own requirements, we can't give you the salient pros and cons for a million different situations. But please tell us what application you have in mind, and maybe we can work together towards an answerable question. Thanks.

Regards,

A. Hi DK. CRCA is a slightly more exacting specification for a M S sheet, so we would need a more exacting specification for the alternate M S sheet before we could answer -- because there might be the same thing. But I think that most any fabricated box would benefit from the uniformity of cold finishing rather than hot rolling, and that every trace of heat scale must be removed before pretreatment and powder coating anyway.

Regards,

A. Hi Murthy. Please start by telling us what ALSI sheet is. I am unfamiliar with that acronym, and we'll all be on different wavelengths unless you tell us what it is. Where did you hear of it, and what did you hear about it? Thanks.

Regards,

A. Hi Rajesh. I can't see anything right off hand that says CRCA would be wrong for a "shutter door" -- although I'm not sure what you mean by that term. More like a wind shutter on a house than the shutter on a camera, I assume?

Picking the ideal material of construction can be a major engineering undertaking involving inquiries into what manufacturing processes are required to fabricate the item, as well as its required functionality and the environment it will be in.

Regards,

A. Hi Bakshi. As was said in the first answer on the page, and again later, CRCA is usually understood to mean "cold rolled close annealed" in this context. TO ME PERSONALLY, CRCA IMPLIES CARBON STEEL.

But it is only an acronym, a handy abbreviation, a piece of slang -- it's NOT a specification, and we can't demand that no one ever use words to mean other that what you wish it to mean :-)

Some other top meanings of CRCA are "Canadian Roofing Contractors Association" and "Chicago Roofing Contractors Association" -- surely, roofing contractors in both Canada and Chicago wish people wouldn't use the acronym to refer to the other association -- but they can't stop them. And is someone wants to talk about CRCA stainless steel, I don't see how you and I can stop them :-)

Regards,

A. Hi Shashank! People who seek answers to highly specific questions get good help from this public forum. If you have a specific question please pose it.

But when you want an introduction to whole broad technologies, the worst book from your library will be vastly better than the best website :-)

Just as students go to 1st grade classes, then 2nd grade, then 3rd grade; carefully authored books follow this gradual progression -- but it takes thousands of hours to prepare such subjects in proper tutorial fashion, with first things first and gradually building on them. On the internet you oscillate between being confronted with terms & concepts that you're not ready for alternating with reading the same information over & over & over again a stultifying number of times. Follow the wiki suggestions if you must though.

Regards,