Hardox® 500 Tuf wear plate is the latest upgrade in the Hardox range. It delivers exceptional strength, hardness and toughness in a single wear plate, guaranteed.

And although it’s a newcomer to the Hardox family, it has proved its worth around the world in tipper bodies, containers, mining tippers and trays, buckets of all kinds, agricultural equipment, liners and wear parts. Hardox® 500 Tuf combines the best properties from Hardox® 450 and Hardox® 500. The result? A wear plate with no real competition on the market.

SSAB, a Nordic and US-based steel company, says its Hardox 500 Tuf wear plate is benefiting customers of Sterling CO-based Industrial Welding and Supply (IWS), a custom fabricator and manufacturer of Colt dump bodies and trailers.

Hardox 500 Tuf is an abrasion-resistant (AR) steel well-suited for IWS’s high-performance dump truck boxes. SSAB said Hardox 500 Tuf is the first 500 Brinell (HB) wear plate with properties on par with structural steel. It delivers high-strength, extreme hardness and guaranteed toughness in a single wear plate. While improving dent protection, the material also offers a 70%-100% longer service life compared to conventional 400 HB AR steel.

“As soon as my customers hear the benefits of Hardox 500 Tuf, they don’t want it as an option, they want it standard,” said JD Stone, vice president and general manager at IWS. “The weight savings alone grabs their attention, and then there’s the longer service life. These trucks are workhorses and must be able to take a beating over time, and with our transition to the new material fully online by the fall, we’ll deliver only that option.”

By using Hardox 500 Tuf wear plate in a thinner dimension, the new generation of Colt-brand dump boxes deliver 14% less tare weight, with 1½ times the service life as the previous generation, SSAB claimed. This allows for an increase of payload capacity by 14% at the same total weight.

“The first four of my Hardox 500 Tuf boxes went to a long-time customer of ours in Denver,” Stone said. “Operating in the construction sector, every trip counts, and now with the added payload capacity, drivers can haul more in fewer trips.

“When you think about it, that means they also consume less fuel.”

Upgrading to Hardox 500 Tuf helps reduce fuel costs and promote safety, SSAB said.

“Many of my customers are dealers of the major brands, including Kenworth, Peterbuilt, Mack, Freightliner and International,” Stone said. “These companies demand the highest quality, and every component of our trucks is selected to be the best of its kind—even down to using flexible automotive paints.

“Hardox 500 Tuf is the next generation of premium wear steel, and we’re excited to fully adopt it and introduce the first box of its kind to the US market.”

Hardox 500 Tuf SSAB properties are “nearly identical” to those of Hardox 450, except Hardox 500 performs well at thinner dimensions. Phil Raffaeli, product/sales manager at IWS, said both can be fabricated with the same equipment.

“We use the same rolling equipment for the Hardox 500 Tuf as we did for Hardox 450,” he said. “The chimes rolled for our elliptical box designs can be slightly shorter and overall thinner going from 0.188 inches to 0.157 inches.”

Many of the 200 Colt boxes IWS produces annually are guaranteed to face cold conditions in Colorado. To help tackle extreme conditions, Hardox 500 Tuf has an impact energy of 27 joules at -20°C (20 foot-pounds at ‑4°F) and, for 20-millimeter plate, a typical value of 45 joules at -40°C (33 foot-pounds at ‑40°F). The new plate also features an unusually narrow hardness window of 475-505 HBW, SSAB claimed.

According to SSAB’s wear calculation app, WearCalc, the estimated relative service life for Hardox 500 Tuf is 27% longer than for Hardox 400 based on sliding wear with sand. For more details, refer to the graphic showing the calculation results, which also can be generated from within the app.

“Over the past few years, I’ve watched the trucking industry’s demand rapidly grow for an even harder, tougher material,” said Tobias Appelkvist, regional sales manager for SSAB special steels. “We fully support efforts by our Hardox In My Body-certified member, IWS, as they work to meet their customers’ needs.”

To see Hardox 500 Tuf and learn what it can do, visit Hardox 500 Tuf and email questions to sales@beyond-steel.com. 

News by:  https://trailer-bodybuilders.com/fabrication/