voestalpine presents special steels and powders at VTM Torino

The Italian subsidiary of the voestalpine Group will participate in VTM Torino 2026 (November 23-25) to present its range of BÖHLER special steels and metal powders. In the automotive and motorsport sectors, where material strength is pushed to the limit, the company will offer solutions specifically engineered to ensure maximum metallurgical purity, an indispensable requirement for preventing fatigue failures in critical components and improving overall vehicle efficiency.

High-Performance Steels for Motorsport
In racing vehicles, gears and drive shafts undergo extreme and repeated mechanical stress. To address these challenges, voestalpine offers materials such as BÖHLER V180 and W460 VMR, which guarantee high hardness and toughness. For crankshafts, the BÖHLER V358 in VAR (Vacuum Arc Remelting) quality offers superior levels of metallurgical purity and fatigue resistance. The range also includes BÖHLER V132 for an optimal balance between costs and mechanical performance, as well as the S600 and S630 high-speed steels for fuel injector production. Specifically, the formulation of BÖHLER S630 reduces the use of tungsten, optimizing the consumption of critical raw materials without compromising the technical specifications required by the application.

Metal Powders for Additive Manufacturing
For complex geometries created via 3D printing, voestalpine has developed the BÖHLER AMPO powder line. The portfolio includes BÖHLER E185 AMPO, a low-alloy steel that combines strength and toughness, making it highly printable and suitable for subsequent surface treatments such as case hardening or nitriding. The offering is completed by BÖHLER M789 AMPO, an innovative maraging steel that combines the mechanical properties of grade 1.2709 with the corrosion resistance typical of 17-4PH. This material eliminates the need to preheat the build chamber and achieves a hardness of 52 HRC through a simple thermal treatment, while also ensuring excellent polishability for final components.

Additional Context: Vacuum Arc Remelting (VAR) and Maraging Metallurgy
This section describes advanced metallurgical processes and structural hardening principles not included in the original press release.

In motorsport, the fatigue failure of crankshafts or gears almost always begins at a microscopic level, corresponding to non-metallic inclusions (such as oxides or sulfides) that act as stress intensifiers. The VAR (Vacuum Arc Remelting) process radically eliminates this risk: a primary steel ingot is slowly melted via an electric arc inside a vacuum chamber. This controlled environment vaporizes gaseous impurities and allows lighter inclusions to float to the top of the ingot, guaranteeing a microstructural homogeneity unattainable with traditional foundry methods. Regarding additive manufacturing powders like BÖHLER M789, "maraging" (a portmanteau of martensitic aging) technology represents an exception compared to conventional steels. This steel achieves its extreme hardness not through a high carbon content and rapid quenching, but through the precipitation of intermetallic compounds (usually nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, or titanium) during an aging heat treatment at moderate temperatures. This mechanism eliminates the dimensional distortions and cracking typical of quenching, making it the ideal material for 3D printing complex geometries that require extremely tight geometric tolerances right out of the printer.

Edited by industrial journalist Lekshman Ramdas, with AI assistance.

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