One of the most common misunderstandings in specifications for stainless steel fabrication relates to the post-fabrication treatments to restore or enhance the corrosion resistance. 

The surface treatment processes invoked vary between pickle and passivate, passivate, or sometimes simply pickle. Needless to say, whilst pickling and passivation are two distinct processes, a lack of clarity can cause some confusion between the owner and the builder/fabricator about what is expected and required. 

This article briefly outlines the factors that affect the corrosion resistance of stainless steels, what surface treatments can be used and how they affect the steel’s surface to improve corrosion

Exemplary stainless steel craftmanship has delivered a sophisticated and lavish cocktail lounge in the heart of the Gold Coast’s entertainment hub.

Cocktail connoisseurs have been flocking to Cherry, The Star Gold Coast to experience the designer drinks on offer in the grandeur of the lounge featuring a 22m long bar. Refurbished in 2017 as part of the first stage of the property’s major transformation, its upmarket look and feel was inspired by its sister venue at The Star Sydney.

Central to Cherry’s luxury design is the intricate, gold metalwork featured in the VIP booth screens, lounge surrounds and balustrades. ASSDA

A stainless steel masterpiece

Michael Van Dam’s award-winning stainless steel dragon sculpture plays a major part in Chinese culture dating several thousand years. 

The dragon is a symbol of prosperity, strength, courage and resolve. The designer himself was born in the year of the Dragon (1964). As a result of welding thousands of stainless steel links together, alongside Van Dam’s creativity, a durable and aesthetically pleasing piece of art came to life – The ‘Emerging Dragon’. 

The Emerging Dragon has been showcased at various locations and shows on the Gold Coast. This stainless steel masterpiece was originally created for the

Humanity’s use of materials has progressed over the millennia from natural resources such as plants and stone to manufactured materials such as ceramics, metals and plastics with a corresponding increase in consumption of energy and materials – and increasing waste production. In parallel, the world’s consumers have grown exponentially from about 1 billion in 1800, to 7.6 billion in 2018 and a predicted 9.8 billion in 2050 – all demanding more infrastructure, facilities and resources to support the expectations of higher standards of living. This has led to an increasing realisation that green production, recycling, waste reduction and more efficient use

Stainless steel has delivered the confidence it will provide the structural performance and meet the 100-year life-cycle of a new marina development on the New South Wales’ South Coast.

The Waterfront, Shell Cove, is a joint residential and mixed-use development between Shellharbour City Council and Frasers Property Australia located 22km south of Wollongong.

Central to the development is its waterfront location and world-class marina that will offer pontoon berthing for approximately 270 vessels, direct access to the Pacific Ocean, charter boat operations, a public boat ramp and a variety of marina facilities and services.

Stainless steel reinforcement has played a

Innovative Melbournian architecture has delivered a striking stainless steel feature in the city’s latest commercial mixed-use development.

Melbourne is setting the benchmark for world-class design with Collins Square now one of Australia’s largest CBD commercial precincts, covering an entire city block on Collins Street. Already home to a number of leading global corporations and the revitalised heritage-listed Southern Goods Shed, the $2.5 billion project will at completion comprise of five commercial towers and over 10,000sqm of retail space.

Black mirror finish stainless steel columns are the focal point in the lobbies and food precincts of Towers Two and Four of

With the use of stainless steel, indigenous artist Kylie Graham’s interest in Whadjuk Noongar customs and culture has helped bring a symbolic sculpture to life at Perth’s recently revitalised Scarborough beach. 

The people of Whadjuk Noongar are the traditional owners of Perth. The Ethereal Welcome Hand sculpture represents a hand casting sand which acknowledges the custodians, the people of Whadjuk and their enduring spiritual connection to the land and sea. 

In respect to Noongar cultural customs, visitors are to throw a handful of sand into the water as an introduction of themselves to the spirits and ancestors. It was only

Ferritics account for approximately 25% of stainless steel use worldwide. The name arises because these alloys have similar properties to carbon steels when they are bent or cut and, unlike the well-known 304 and 316 austenitic grades, ferritics are strongly attracted to a magnet.

There is a major misconception that ferritic stainless steels are less corrosion resistant than austenitic alloys. On the contrary, for any required level of corrosion resistance (or Pitting Resistance Equivalent [PRE]), you can select a specific stainless steel from either the austenitic or ferritic family depending on the physical properties desired. Another similarity of these two

World-class infrastructure demands high quality products and long-term asset performance, both of which have been delivered through superior workmanship and the use of stainless steel.

Fuchs Lubricants Australasia opened its new $33 million purpose-built plant at Beresfield, New South Wales in February 2018. Operating in Australia since 1979, Fuchs’ expanded and relocated from its original factory in Newcastle due to strong business growth, now being the only major lubricants company to still manufacture products in the country.

Fuchs’ new plant is a blending operation, features two highly-developed laboratories and is three times larger than the old factory, producing 10,000 lubricant

Taking pride of place within Perth’s Optus Stadium Park is the Arbour featuring a stainless steel cable net canopy delivered by ASSDA Member Structural Dynamics.

The 60,000-capacity arena is the latest major development to hit Western Australia’s capital, boasting a world-class multi-purpose venue that combines innovative design with community infrastructure.

The impressive Arbour stands 10m tall and 20m wide, and stretches 450m around the south side of the Stadium. It connects a new six-platform railway station to the Swan River, over which the Matagarup Bridge is currently being constructed to provide pedestrian access to East Perth.

Over a thousand stainless

Stainless steel is playing a vital role in the structural integrity of a new state-of-the-art library at one of Brisbane’s most prestigious boys’ school.

The Centenary Library at Anglican Church Grammar School was designed by Brand + Slater Architects, and the ambitious project was part of the school’s master plan to provide a technology-rich, world-class centre for its 1800 students. Comprising four levels, the tertiary-inspired building features an extensive range of learning spaces including a 250-seat lecture theatre, teaching and meeting rooms and over 80 individual study areas.

The library stands 23.5m tall on a heritage-listed part of the school

Either while being welded or glistening in the summer sun, the three major families of stainless steel behave differently to each other, carbon steels, aluminium and copper alloys because, as shown in the bar chart, the coefficient of thermal expansion and conductivity - and their ratio - varies.  

While alloys of copper and aluminium have equal or higher coefficients of expansion than austenitic stainless steels, it is the unique combination of high thermal expansion and low thermal conductivity that necessitates special precautions and procedures in the design and fabrication of the most commonly used 304/304L and 316/316L grades of

The new facility in Merrifield Estate on Melbourne's outer northern fringe will allow Dulux to step into the next generation of paint manufacturing technology and innovation. Dulux's aim was to design and construct a state-of-the-art facility, so using quality products was essential to achieve this. Stainless steel in 300 series grades was an integral part of the project design, including storage vessels and over 10,000m of food grade, quality tube complying with AS1528.

CONCEPT STAGE

In 2015, Dulux announced its decision to construct the new state-of-the-art, highly automated paint factory at an investment of $165m.

The Dulux plant, the first

You return home after a long journey. Imagine being greeted by a beautiful stainless steel sculpture surrounded by landscaped gardens on your return. One ASSDA Member has used stainless steel to symbolise everything we love about our communities: Security, comfort and home.

It’s easy to think of stainless steel in relation to tubes, panels and rolls in the construction industry, but Brisbane-based ASSDA member, Concept Stainless Design, has taken the product and crafted it into stunningly beautiful sculptures for developers Villa World at their new subdivision on the northern Gold Coast.

Located 70km south of Brisbane, Arundel Springs will

The use of duplex stainless steels has grown globally based on their strength, corrosion resistance and a range of properties that improve equipment life.

The name duplex is sometimes used to describe Alloy 2205 (UNS S31803 or UNS S32205), however duplex is a family of alloys ranging from lean duplex and standard duplex to super duplex stainless steel.

HISTORY

Duplex stainless steel was first developed in France and Sweden in the 1930’s, with the early grades becoming a forerunner for AISI 329, but a lack of control over the chemistry and lack of adequate welding products and techniques impeded development

New infrastructure in the heart of Sydney is set to transform the busy transport hub and provide a stylish new gateway to the Barangaroo development.

21 June 2017

A growing population in Australia's most populous city calls for innovative design, so when the NSW State Government commissioned construction of the Wynyard Walk, ASSDA Sponsor and Accredited Fabricator Stoddart stepped up to the challenge.

The Wynyard Walk forms one of several solutions to break congestion in the Sydney CBD, allowing pedestrians to move from the Wynyard transport hub to the new development at Barangaroo waterfront in six minutes, avoiding steep hills,

Wave Discs Revolutionises Traditional Drying Process

In the search to find a more efficient way of manufacturing industrial disc dryers for the meat-rendering industry, Melbourne-based engineering company Pinches Group has developed a new technology called Wave Disc.

THE CHALLENGE

Traditional rotary discs comprise of a series of stainless steel discs, welded back-to-back and attached to a centre pipe. Together, the pipe and discs make up the shaft, which operates under steam pressure and rotates within a stainless steel shell.

Employed throughout the world in a wide range of industries, disc dryers are commonly used to dry materials such as coal,

Innovation Design Set to Transform the Industry

For the past six decades, the welding process has only been tweaked and modified, but one Adelaide company has developed a new process set to save millions of dollars and forever change the way welds are performed.

DEVELOPMENT

In 2000, Dr Laurie Jarvis and his associates at CSIRO Adelaide studied the effect of surface tension within an active weld. It was noted that under certain conditions, namely narrow gaps and increased process conditions, that far greater speeds could be obtained when welding clean materials.

The team developed a brand new process involving a

The successful collaboration of ASSDA members and their expertise in the extensive use of stainless steel has been integral to bringing Perth’s iconic and most complex bridge to life.

The Elizabeth Quay Pedestrian Bridge was constructed by DASSH, a joint venture between Decmil, Structural Systems and Hawkins Civil, and is a key feature of the Elizabeth Quay mixed-use development project core to revitalising Perth’s CBD.

Designed and engineered by Arup, the cable-stayed suspension bridge features a leaning double arch, is 22m high, 5m wide and is suspended over the inlet of the Swan River with a clearance of 5.2m from

Stunning stainless steel creations by ASSDA Member Draffin Street Furniture have delivered the contemporary edge required by the rising urban metropolis of Ringwood, Victoria.

Working in collaboration with a team of urban architects and designers, Draffin Street Furniture crafted a suite of custom urban street furniture for the Eastland Shopping Centre in Ringwood.

The Eastland Shopping Centre is located within a major transport network and services a large area of Melbourne’s eastern growth corridor. The integration of sustainable development within Ringwood is creating a sought after urban destination with a contemporary lifestyle. As such, its development is a consciously considered