This thread was about ordinary resistors, not some special purpose device for which you don't have any details.
Before we go further down the new tangent, please define what you mean by "qualifies as a stainless steel." That is, is any alloy that contains chromium and iron a "stainless steel" regardless of the relative proportions each metal or the inclusion of other metals and non-metals in the alloy?
John
Hello,
New tangent? What new tangent? We're talking about resistors right? We then started talking about resistors with stainless steel leads rather than just plain steel leads, and you did not believe it would be reasonable to have a resistor with SS leads even though in other places in the thread other members mentioned rusting resistor leads of ordinary resistor leads that must have been made from plain steel. At the very least, i would think that would tell you that it might not be such a bad idea
It makes sense to me that if we had a lot of resistors with plain steel leads and they worked ok to begin with but the leads rusted after a time that we would be able to improve the design with stainless steel leads instead of plain steel leads. That way we'd have the usual resistor but with longer lasting leads.
And i dont see any tangent here because this "new" resistor is just a power resistor that is made to be able to endure in more harsh environments. As i am sure you know, chromium is added in order to improve certain properties of steel. One is hardness, the other is resistance to corrosion. The name "stainless steel" is a friendly name, that helps to recognize the properties of the steel over some other major type of steel. In order for it to qualify as a stainless steel it would have to contain chromium, and the percent to qualify varies depending on who makes the steel. It's usually over 10 percent, but in general the more chromium that is added the better the corrosion resistance.
So we can ask the question, if we want to make a metal with base metal of iron that is corrosion resistant, what should we do? We should add chromium.
We can also ask the question, if someone made a metal from iron and chromium and tout it as being corrosion resistant, what kind of metal is it likely to be?
For this particular product we can also ask, if they made a metal from iron and chromium and wanted it to be able to withstand a harsh sulfer rich environment, then what approximate percentage chromium should we use? We would make the metal some 18 percent chromium or higher. Then we can ask, what would we probably call a metal that contains iron and 18 percent chromium that can be used in a very harsh environment? I'll leave that answer up to the reader
So in short, i dont see any problem talking about a power resistor where the leads and the whole body are made of stainless steel, and i would not have any problem calling that metal stainless steel knowing only two of the metals it contains are iron and at least 18 percent chromium. At the very least it would add to the info we get from the information gathering process when a question comes up.