Melting Point of Metals and Alloys in °C and °F

A pure metal melts at a temperature. An alloy melts over a range, and the two ends of that range are where most heating jobs go wrong. Below are published melting points for thirty pure metals, plus solidus and liquidus for the alloys a workshop actually meets — brasses, bronzes, stainless grades and solders — in Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Why a single number is usually the wrong answer

Pure metals have one melting point because there is only one thing in them. Add a second element and the mixture stops behaving that way: it begins to melt at the solidus, is completely liquid at the liquidus, and in between is neither. That intermediate state is a slurry of solid crystals in liquid metal — it will not braze, will not pour cleanly and has almost no strength.

The gap can be enormous. Beryllium copper starts melting at 866 °C and is not fully liquid until 982 °C. Quoting either end as "the melting point" is wrong in opposite directions, and quoting a number in the middle is wrong in both.

Melting points of pure metals

Copper alloys: brasses and bronzes

Copper alloys are named loosely and specified precisely. "Brass" covers everything from free-cutting brass, fully liquid by 899 °C, to red brass, which has not started melting at that temperature. Work from the alloy designation, not the trade name.

Steels and stainless steels

Stainless steel has no melting point either, and the grades sit further apart than most people expect. The austenitic grades most workshops handle — 304 and its relatives — melt between 1400 °C and 1450 °C; the ferritic and martensitic grades used for blades and fasteners run to 1530 °C.

Solders and low-melting alloys

A few alloys do melt at a single temperature. These are the eutectics: at one exact composition the mixture changes state all at once, with no pasty range. That is why Sn63Pb37 became the standard for electronics work and why its lead-free replacement, SAC305, is formulated so close to eutectic. A joint disturbed inside a pasty range comes out dull, grainy and weak.

Method and precision

Pure-metal values are current handbook figures, listed as published — many charts still circulate pre-1990 values for chromium, tungsten, nickel and gold. Alloy figures are solidus and liquidus for the named designation; a different composition under the same trade name will differ. Fahrenheit is calculated from the Celsius figure, so the two columns here cannot disagree, though a source that published Fahrenheit first may differ by a degree or so through rounding. Three values not in the tables: aluminium alloy 6061 is 582 °C to 652 °C, the iron-carbon eutectic is 1147 °C, which is why cast iron melts far below pure iron, and the silver-copper eutectic is 779 °C, where sterling silver starts melting. Cast-iron rows are absent: published figures span 1150 °C to 1300 °C with no agreement on grade, and a made-up midpoint would be worse than the gap. Sources: CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics melting-point data (the CRC column of the standard elements data table). Copper Development Association alloy database, alloys.copper.org. British Stainless Steel Association, "Melting temperature range for stainless steels". Kester alloy temperature chart. Aluminum Association typical solidus/liquidus for 6061, as published on the ASM/MatWeb data sheet.

What this means at the bench

Aluminium gives no warning. Steel glows red long before it softens; aluminium stays silver right up to the moment it collapses, so anyone used to heating steel overshoots the first time.

Galvanised steel is a hazard well below any melting point that matters. Zinc boils around 907 °C and gives off oxide fumes far lower, so cutting or welding it needs the coating removed and the air moving.

Heat applied to free a seized fastener travels. A few hundred degrees is nowhere near melting anything, but it is well past the tempering temperature of a hardened bolt, a spring or a bearing race. The part survives the heat and fails later under load, which makes the cause hard to trace.

Gear is in measuring equipment, cutting tools and clamping tools.