Matrix high speed steels were developed in the 1960’s by VASCO. I previously wrote about historical and current matrix steels in this article. The original steels came out of improved techniques for measuring the composition of the “matrix” of the steel. Some of the carbon and alloying elements go toward forming carbides, what remains is in solution in the “matrix” of the steel. Carbides help with wear resistance but are detrimental to toughness, so the metallurgists decided to make high toughness steels by taking the measured matrix composition of the best high speed steels and using that composition instead. The first was a matrix version of M2 high speed steel called VASCO-MA, and they followed that up with Matrix II, a matrix version of M42 high speed steel.
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