Key Determinants for High-Alloyed Cast Irons for Mechanical Engineering

Abstract This work presents the factors determining cast iron, and particularly austenitic high-alloy cast iron as a construction material, which is ranked among the leading casting alloys of iron with carbon, mainly due to its very good service properties, which makes it dedicated as a material for automotive castings, pipe and fitting castings and components resistant to elevated temperatures, corrosion and abrasive wear. Construction materials currently used in industry have increasingly better properties and their potential is depleting quickly. This forces the manufacturers to adjust the requirements and production capabilities of cast iron using the most modern technologies that give the expected beneficial economic and operating effects. The paper quotes the results of research in the field of the offered technologies that give special surface features to machine parts made of cast iron by modernising the parameters of the technological process of obtaining high-alloy austenitic cast iron, i.e., by applying coatings, as well as by appropriate surface treatment, the aim of which is and reinforce the material surface with those properties which are important in a given application.