Glossary

Off-Size

Rolled steel too light or too heavy to meet requirements.

Oil Can

See Buckle.

Oil-Hardening

A process of hardening a ferrous alloy of suitable composition by heating within or above the transformation range and quenching in oil.

Olsen (Ductility)Test

A method of measuring the ductility and drawing properties of strip or sheet metal which involves determination of the width and depth of impression. The test simulating a deep drawing operation is made by a standard steel ball under pressure, continuing until the cup formed from the metal sample fractures. Readings are in thousandths of an inch. This test is sometimes used to detect stretcher straining and indicates the surface finish after drawing, similar to the Erichsen ductility test.

One-Side Bright Mill Finish

Sheet material having a moderate degree of brightness on one side. The reverse side is uncontrolled and may have a dull, non-uniform appearance.

Orange Peel

Roughening of the surface sometimes encountered in forming or drawing metals that have a course grain structure.

Oscillate Wound/Ribbon Wound

Oscillate winding is a technique that was developed to aid in winding and shipping customer orders for multiples. (Multiples are created by slitting or shearing a coil into any width or set of widths.) The slits are wound back and forth on a mandrel in the same manner that a fishing line is taken up on a reel; that is, left to right, right to left, left to right. This allows for multiples to be wrapped on one wide coil that is easily handled in shipping.

Ovals

A hot-rolled carbon steel bar product which is oval in cross section.

Overaging

Aging under conditions of time and temperature greater than those required to obtain maximum change in a certain property, so that the property is altered in the direction of the initial value.

Overfill

A defect in a rolled bar or other section which is an over-fullness on some part of the surface. Among the causes are worn rolls and extrusion into the clearance of the rolls.

Overheating

Heating a metal or alloy to such a high temperature that its properties are impaired. When the original properties cannot be restored by further heat treating, by mechanical working, or by combination of working and heat treating, the overheating is known as burning.

Oxide

Usually refers in the steel industry to oxide of iron, of which there are three principal ones