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How to identify 304 stainless steel [North Carolina] 

August 9, 2008

Hi my name is Allen
My company purchases many household furniture and accessory pieces such as lamps and figurines. We are struggling to find a sure fire way to make sure that what our suppliers are shipping to us is actually the 304 stainless steel that we are paying for. We had been told that you can use a magnet to check this but until now i have not been able to verify if this is true..
Please lend some advice
Thank you
Allen

Allen Jubin
Buyer - Morganton, NC, USA

Hi, Allen. This has been addressed dozens of times on this site, so if you need a fuller answer, patiently apply the search engine. But the 2-sentence answer is --

Lack of magnetism is a good indication of type 3xx stainless steels, as opposed to plain steel and lower grades of stainless steel (4xx series), but there are many other non-magnetic materials like aluminum, brass, and zinc. So if you need a "sure-fire way" you would need to invest $15 thousand to $35 thousand in a "scrap-sorter" spark tester or XRF machine.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.  finishing.com Brick, New Jersey