Conquer the 2026 Engineering Manufacture OCR R109 Test – Build, Innovate, and Dominate!

The key idea is whether the material contains iron. If iron is present, the metal is ferrous; if iron is not present, it’s non-ferrous. Non-ferrous metals therefore do not contain iron by definition. Ferrous metals include materials like steel and cast iron. Stainless steel, while corrosion-resistant, is still an iron-based alloy because it contains iron along with chromium and other elements. An alloy is just a blend of elements, and many alloys are iron-based (such as steel), but the term itself doesn’t guarantee iron content. So the category that inherently does not contain iron is non-ferrous metals.