EN 1982:2008 - Equivalents

European Standard - EN 1982:2008

Over the years, copper alloys have been identified by individual names and by a variety of designation systems. Many of these names and designation codes remain stubbornly in use and are often used interchangeably. Serving a global set of customers can be daunting when 5 conversations might each use a different standard and designation. Fortunately, harmony is always found, and this page helps with maintaining order and adding clarity.

The evolution of copper alloys over time has, contrary to what one might expect, led to a divergence of alloys across the world, rather than a convergence through refinement and learning. One could be forgiven for thinking that the alloy best suited for say, the bush on the flywheel of a 300 ton eccentric press, working in a benign ambient environment, would be the same in the US, as it is in Germany, Japan, the UK or Brasil. Generally, there is agreement that a phosphor bronze alloy is best suited for a bush machined with precise clearlances, fitted with care on a well maintained eccentric press, but at a more detailed level, the difference in alloys used for the same application around the world can be surprisingly diverse.

Even where there is agreement on the alloying element composition, the common names of alloys pose another challenge. Red Brass is Gun Metal? So in an attempt to make the lives of our customers just a bit lesss frustrating, we have provided equivalance tables from the perspective of the dominant global designation standards. This page takes the European Standard EN 1982:2008, and provides equivalent and nearest equivalent alloys as defined by other designation standards.

The EN 1982:2008 standard was approved by CEN, which includes Sweden, Slovakia, Spain, Italy, Germany and the UK, each of whom had their own set of standards to which some cling stubbornly, and who can blame them? So we have included a reference to BS-1400 and the German DIN that were officially superceded more thn a decade ago.

EN 1982 - Copper and copper alloys - Ingots and Castings, contains 38 different alloys, and we present all of them, except for Cu-C (CC040A) and the copper-chromium alloy CuCr1-C (CC140C).