High Speed Steels

High Speed Steels (HSS) are special class of high alloy steels and are used mainly for the manufacture of cutting tools such as taps, dies, tool bits, drill bits, milling cutter, reamer, broaches, long run punches and dies etc.
High speed steel gets its name from the fact that it is used to cut at high speed. The first high speed steels were tungsten type developed by Robert Mushet in UK and FW Taylor in USA towards the end of last century. In 1904 addition of vanadium was patented by crucible steel comp-any leading finally to today's best known grade, the 18/4/1 steel. The addition of cobalt in HSS was first reported in 1912 by Becker in Germany. Due to the shortage of tungsten and its increase in prices, Mo bearing high speed steels were introduced in around 1930 in USA.