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Why should you choose a stainless steel roller chain?

Stainless steel roller chain is quite different from carbon steel roller chain in a variety of ways. While the construction and sizes of stainless steel chains are the same as traditional ANSI standard roller chains, the parts are formed from high-grade stainless steel for use in medical, food applications, chemicals and more. While slightly more expensive than traditional roller chains, stainless steel offers a wide range of benefits:

• Stainless steel is corrosion-resistant at high temperatures
• Extremely low temperatures do not cause problems as these chains are not subject to cracking
• Stainless steel is glossy and attractive, giving the appearance of cleanliness for indoor or food-related applications

While there are plenty of positive reasons to use stainless steel roller chain, it's important to have the entire picture before selecting this type of chain for your application. While still strong, stainless steel has less tensile strength of comparable ANSI roller chains and these chains also may wear more quickly than their carbon steel counterparts. The surface hardness of stainless steel is lower as the parts are not heat-treated with tempering and quenching. In many applications, you'll find that the stainless steel roller chains retain more heat, which further affects the tensile strength and wear life of the product.