Stainless Steel 440C Dowel Pins
Hardenable martensitic stainless — shipped soft annealed for the customer to heat treat.
440C is the martensitic stainless you reach for when a pin has to resist wear rather than corrosion in the chemical sense, and it is the one material here that arrives unfinished in an important sense: pins are machined and shipped in the soft annealed state. Hardening is the customer's to do and to specify — in house, or through a vacuum heat treat vendor when the process needs to be certifiable. That is what makes 440C worth the extra step: the hardness is chosen for the application rather than fixed by the supplier. Its corrosion resistance, hardened or not, is real but modest — closer to a tool steel that happens to be stainless than to 316.
440C pins come up where the pin is a wear surface, not just a locator — a pivot that cycles, or a joint that is opened and closed constantly. Order with the heat treat step planned: what ships is a soft annealed pin, and hardening it is the customer's responsibility, whether that is done in house or sent out to a vacuum heat treat vendor who can certify the result. Note that the diameter, length and tolerance quoted at configuration are as delivered, in the annealed condition. Heat treatment moves the part, and allowing for that movement belongs in the specification the customer sets. If the assembly is going to sit in saline or see repeated autoclaving, 316 or 17-4 is the better answer; 440C is chosen for hardness first and corrosion resistance second.
Any length, not just the stocked ones
The diameters below are the standard nominal sizes, because that is what a hole is usually reamed for. The lengths are not a constraint: anything from 0.02" to 4" can be turned to order, which is the step that otherwise means cutting a stock pin down and re-finishing the end. Diameters run from 0.015" to 0.375", including sizes between two standard ones.
No pre-priced size pages are published for Stainless Steel 440C yet, but it is fully available in the configurator — enter any diameter and length for an instant price.
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