Free cutting steel was first successfully developed in the United States during World War I in the 20th century and has a history of over 90 years. Since the birth of free cutting steel, countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, the former Soviet Union, and Japan have successively produced and used it. In recent decades, free cutting steel has developed at an astonishing speed. Currently, the world consumes over 4 million tons of free cutting steel annually, but most of it is produced and consumed by developed countries, with more than half of it being in the United States and Japan.

Taking Japan as an example, production and use of free cutting steel began in 1940. The production of free cutting steel in 1954 was 12000 tons, jumped to 430000 tons in 1970, reached 822000 tons in 1980, 1.023 million tons in 1982, and exceeded 2 million tons in the 1990s, with an average annual growth rate of around 10%. In recent years, with an average annual steel production of 100 million tons, the production of free cutting steel has remained between 1 million tons and 1.3 million tons. In 2013, the production of free cutting steel was 1.037 million tons, accounting for 6.6% of the special steel production.

After years of effort, developed industrial countries have established their own system of standards for free cutting steel. In the American AISI standard, there are 31 grades of free cutting steel, including 18 grades for low-carbon steel and 19 grades for stainless steel. In the Japanese JIS G4808-83 standard, there are 14 grades of free cutting structural steel (including 9 grades of low-carbon steel) and 9 grades of free cutting stainless steel. In the former Soviet Union, in the TOCT1441-75 standard, the number of grades for easy cutting steel increased from 7 to 20. In addition to retaining 6 sulfur grades, 3 selenium grades and 11 sulfur lead grades were added. Currently, countries around the world are constantly striving to develop easy to cut steel that meets environmental requirements. For example, a steel company in the United States and Kobe Steel in Japan have developed a new type of free cutting steel that uses bismuth instead of lead. The main chemical composition of the free cutting steel in the United States that uses bismuth instead of lead is (%): C 0.09, Mn 1.25，P 0.09，S 0.46，Bi 0.17， After a systematic study by Kobe, Japan on bismuth replacing lead in free cutting steel, it was found that the amount of bismuth added was less than half of the amount of lead added, but it achieved the same cutting and machining performance; USS/Kobe has successfully developed and successfully produced one furnace of 200 tons of tin instead of lead free cutting steel at full capacity. In addition, Aichi Steel Company of Japan has also successfully developed magnesium sulfur calcium ternary free cutting steel. Based on their usage effects, it was found that they all have excellent cutting and machining performance.

China has been producing sulfur free cutting steel since 1953. Due to the high quality requirements and high production difficulty of free cutting steel, it has caused special steel mills to be unwilling to produce and ordinary steel mills to be unable to produce, resulting in the need for a large amount of imported free cutting steel in China. According to relevant statistical data, in 2002, China imported a total of 163700 tons of free cutting steel, while China's domestic annual production was only about 30000 tons. With the development of the mechanical processing industry, especially the automotive industry, the demand for free cutting steel in China will rapidly increase. Based on the annual increase in China's automobile production and the proportion of demand for free cutting steel in Japan's automobile industry, it is estimated that in 2015, China's automobile production was about 24 million vehicles, and the annual demand for free cutting steel in China will reach 400000-500000 tons. This shows that there is still a lot of development space for free cutting steel in China.