Bohler-Uddeholm VanaxSuperClean Knife Steel
Composition Analysis Graph, Equivalents And Overview

Generated 98345887 times.

Evolution of the Bohler-Uddeholm Vanax steel series. 3rd gen PM Nitrogen steel. As far as I know, started appearing knives circa 2016. Bohler-Uddeholm's own publications also list is as a good knife steel along with familiar ELMAX, M390, N690 and N680. As it often happens with new alloys, it picked up several names. Alpha Knife Supply sells it as Vanax, Shirogorov refers to it as Vanax 37, well so far those are the name variations I was able to find on the net. For the record, the official name used by the maker is - Vanax SuperClean.
As for the properties, reportedly Vanax SuperClean is highly corrosion resistant, also has very decent wear resistance of both types, adhesive and abrasive. Nitrogen steels tend to be very fine grained, no reason to think Vanax SuperClean is any different in that regard. As for the composition I have for now, it seems to be more of a specific batch sample than the official spec. I did find Vanax SuperClean document form Bohler-Uddeholm, which lists precise composition values, not ranges, which is atypical, exact value to tenth of the percentile are rather difficult to maintain consistently, if not impossible, but that's what they list, safe to assume those values are targets, and some tolerances are allowed. There is more detailed composition floating around, which I've listed here, and that's clearly the result of lab test of a specific sample. I just listed it as an example, to illustrate what really goes into the steel vs. official spec, but values like Cu - 0.09% or W - 0.05% can be dismissed entirely, those are trace elements and present unintentionally, and clearly won't affect alloy performance in any meaningful way. E.g. Tungsten(W) is so heavy that 0.05% would result in one atom per hundreds of thousands. Anyway, in this composition you can disregard Co, Cu, Ni, W, Al values completely as trace elements, not intended to be there, just listed for the curious minds. As Bohler-Uddeholm states in their document, if your main objective is corrosion resistance you should pick Vanax SuperClean. In other words, they don't put it above ELMAX, M390 when corrosion resistance is not the primary function of the blade. I suppose you should listen to them. Other than that, working hardness is speced at 60-62HRC, there's a caveat, above 60HRC you'd need cryo or deep freeze involved in heat treatment protocol, otherwise 60HRC is the ceiling. As a side note, it appears that both, Vanax 35 and Vanax 75 have been discontinued in favor of Vanax SuperClean.

Manufacturing Technology - PM

Country - Sweden(SE)

Known Aliases:
Bohler-Uddeholm - Vanax SuperClean, Bohler-Uddeholm - Vanax, Bohler-Uddeholm - Vanax 37, Bohler-Uddeholm - Vanax37