AR 400 has been the wear plate industry standard since the 1960's.  It is not much more than low carbon steel that is heated orange hot and quenched with an oil spray.  This makes the surface of the plate hard for about .020" to .030" deep. 

It looks like it wears great at first, however, you always see rapid, dramatic wear in a very short period of time. 

When you wear through the harder top  or bottom plate surface, the softer center section is exposed and will wear rapidly.  You often see wave patterns as seen here due to the wear happening from below as well as above.  It is not the same hardness all the way through the steel.  Predicting wear life is difficult because it shows dramatic wear in a short time frame.

Most people think that the accelerated wear was from processing harder materials, but that is not correct.  You have simply worn through the thin, hardened plate surface.  The center of the plate  is much softer; so it wears out rapidly, in a short period of time.

It acts much like an Oreo® cookie; the harder cookie on the outside with a much softer material inside. 


AR400 has a thin, hard exterior surface with a much softer center. 

If you have ever drilled holes in AR400, you will recall that it takes a lot of effort to pierce through the surface.  Also remember that once you pierce the top surface, it removes a metal shaving curl just like mild steel, until you get down to the harder bottom surface.

Welding AR400 Steel
Very little alloying materials mean you can easily weld it with 7018, or a 70 series wire.  Many manufacturers specify using standard 7018 to weld AR400.  If there were significant levels of chromium, nickel, molyebdenum, boron, manganese, etc., it would require a welding alloy designed specifically for the chemisty.

TriBraze, however, is an alloy steel; meaning it has significantly higher levels of nickel, chromium, and molybdenum which allow the steel to harden through out the thickness of the plate.  This results in very consistent wear through out the life of the plate.

We suggest welding TriBraze with TriWeld 3 or TriWeld 3-FCG wire, where the chemistry of the electrodes have been selected for ease of welding TriBraze to iteslf, to AR400 or AR500, T-1 steel or mild steel.

Using the right tool for the right job is what TriBraze is all about.



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