What exactly is billet steel. Is it made different, is it a type of steel, does it come from another planet or what? I guess its supposed to be stronger, it demands a higher premium than forged steel. But why?

 

Billet is not a form of steel, i dont even hear billet steel to often. Its usually used in conunction with aluminum. Billet Aluminum is just machined aluminum. Any time you take a big "chunk" of material and make it into a small piece, you have made it into a billet product.

 

Almost, but not quite.

A "billet" is a large, raw, piece of processed metal. Billet parts are those that are made from a billet, usually by means of machining.

This opposed to cast parts, which are made from molten metal that is poured into a mold, or forged parts which are made by, well, forging--forcing the metal under pressure into the desired shape.

Generally speaking, "billet" parts are high quality becasue the quality control of the raw material (the billet) is much better than that of cast parts. Also, the production method (usually, machining) is of higher accuracy than forging or other operations like forging or casting.

Though, forging generally makes a STRONGER part becasue in the forging process the grain pattern of the raw material is forced into the shape of the part.

 

I'd also add the key distinction when buying fancy trim parts is that it's not cast. You don't get mold lines and the machining can leave some cool looking surface patterns.