Talk:Nivarox

Business Entity or Alloy?
I think the word Nivarox is more widely used to refer to the alloy than the business entity. I'd suggest rewriting the initial paragraph to focus on the alloy, with a mention of the business, and expand the section on the alloy and move it above the sections on the business entity. --Chetvorno 09:28, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The article should be divided in two related to a disambiguation. The company is a world champion on its objective. -- Tasma3197 (talk) 14:20, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

The Nivarox Alloy
It seems to me the most important characteristic of Nivarox has been left out of the section on the alloy. The reason it is used in hairsprings is its low thermal coefficient of elasticity, not its low thermal expansion coefficient. --Chetvorno 10:02, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Exaggerated Claim?
I think it's a stretch to claim that Nivarox alone made the compensation balance obsolete. If any one alloy can make that claim, I would think it would be Elinvar, the first low elasticity coefficient alloy. It also makes the article sound like a corporate promotion. I would suggest either supporting the claim with references, or qualifying it. --Chetvorno 09:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Composition
The composition for the material seems very odd, at least to me. If the matrix of the alloy is iron/carbon, in which the other elements are dissolved/precipitated then why does the matrix only comprise at most 27% of the material? What percentages are these in, atomic or weight? If the cobalt concentration is higher than that of the "matrix" why is it not a cobalt alloy? I don't get this at all - nor can I find any references to the alloy based upon its commerical name. User A1 (talk) 09:07, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, this chemical composition does not make any sense to me. 98.207.60.75 (talk) 10:57, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

This alloy is referred to as stainless steel in the article, but clearly there is little iron in the percentages. Ok, wow, clearly somebody just copied the Financial Times article word-for-word. I can't find any other source calling Nivarox a "stainless steel" alloy. Unfortunately I can't find anything else technical about it, at least in English. The alloy is certainly austenitic (FCC crystal structure) so it is analogous to stainless steel. Cobalt replaces iron and the nickel and chrome are doing what they would do in stainless steel. But without iron, how can we call it steel? The only reference calling it steel is the Financial Times, and that's not a reputable source for metallurgy.Cole Petersburg (talk) 15:15, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

PROBLEM SOLVED. There is serious confusion in the tradenames, thus I was misled when some time ago I wrote part of the article which needs now complete re-structuring and re-writing. NIVAROX (and other forms of NIVAROX such as nivarox-ct, nivarox-ctc, nivarox-m, etc) is likely based not on cobalt but iron. It is NIVAFLEX series of alloys which are based on cobalt, or to be more precise, on CoNiCr. Although they are produced by the same company, Nivarox and Nivaflex have only similar names, their composition is absolutely not the same. Nivaflex needs its own wikipedia page then, unless someone regroups all watch spring alloys and specifies each chemical composition.The composition given in the wikipedia article of Nivaflex is correct but should be moved to a dedicated page. If you read http://www.vacuumschmelze.com/index.php?id=169&L=2 ,the chemical composition of NIVAROX-CT is strangely absent from their database, yet if you visit their page for NIVAFLEX 45/5 http://www.vacuumschmelze.com/index.php?id=164&L=2 the chemical composition is given along with according datasheet. Vacuumschmelze GmBH for Siemens components Inc. is the company who produces (or rather produced) the alloy and is listed as such by a reliable and verifiable source, which is "Woldman's Engineering Alloys, 9th edition, ASM International, 2000", on page 805. An unspecified version of Nivaflex is also given. The book lists all variations of NIVAROX alloys as having 60-61% Iron in their composition, and the original NIVAROX is listed as having 28% Nickel, undisclosed amounts of Molybdenum, Tungsten and Beryllium with a balance (thus undisclosed amount) of Iron. No patent number is revealed neither. Another if not even more reliable source would be http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F10065028_63.pdf, page 1 of "Subvolume I1 ‘Magnetic Alloys for Technical Applications. Soft Magnetic Alloys, Invar and Elinvar Alloys’ of Volume 19 ‘Magnetic Properties of Metals’ of Landolt-Börnstein - Group III Condensed Matter., Springer " (being much more precise than Woldman's engineering alloys book), states that NIVAROX series of alloys is in the category of Nickel-Iron spring alloys such as ELINVAR and gives precise chemical compositions in a chart comparing spring alloys for use in magnetic environment : page 1 is viewable here http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F10065028_63.pdf#page-1 Likely the patent for original NIVAROX alloy was filed by Dr. Reinhard Straumann around 1931 according to sources such as the Swiss company "Precision Engineering AG" http://www.precision-engineering.ch/Material_PE_3000_2.html as they claim that the alloy they produce, named PE3000, is according to them just another name for the NIVAROX-CT which thay also claim is the original "recipe" (and not just NIVAROX as listed in Woldman's engineering book). One thing is sure though, NIVAROX and NIVAFLEX are two different alloys, the first is a nickel-iron specialty alloy and the second one is a cobalt based superalloy. VERY IMPORTANT: Vacuumschmelze GmBH's online data for NIVAFLEX is simply wrong as they omitted to report the percentage of Chromium (if you add all weight % for each elements, there is approx 18% missing )but a precise composition can be found here: http://dev.hempel-metals.com/media/downloads/1210162237-1202302046-5nivaflex.pdf Or here http://www.generaleressorts.com/default.asp?MenuID=13244

The website http://hiro.alliancehorlogere.com/en/Under_the_Loupe/The_Hairspring which imitates wikipedia's layout and structure says NIVAROX contains large amounts of cobalt, but truth is there is absolutely no cobalt at all in any nivarox alloy. It's only in Nivaflex, and in 45%.

In a nutshell (by weight) : NIVAROX-CT is approx :Fe ~54% (balance), Ni 37%-38%,Cr 8%,Mn 0.8%,Ti 1%,Be 0.8%-0.9%,Si 0.2%, C< 0.1 ( 0.02typical). On the other hand, NIVAFLEX is approx : Co 45%, Ni 21%, Cr 18%, Fe 5%, Mo 4%, W 4%, Ti 1% , Be 0.2% (only in NIVAFLEX 45/5, the 45/18 version has no beryllium) 82.240.163.245 (talk) 19:31, 20 April 2013 (UTC)