Ever wonder where the metal from your gun comes from?

[Timjoebillybob]

You mentioned that the truck in the video was huge, and there was nothing to compare it to. That applies to most of the video. The shear size is amazing. '

I do question one thing, it says in the roller mill the slabs are going 40 mpg. That doesn't seem right. At least for entry into it, or exit out of it. I only walked through that area a time or two, but they were going much slower on the way in, and way faster on the way out. Slow crawl on the feed and a couple hundred mph going on the roll. Are they talking average speed?

Anything you pour the steel into, such as ladles, tundish boxes, run-offs, etc, are lined with masonry.

That's what my brother and nephew do, they work for an outside contractor lining tundishes.

.

It's all a matter of perspective.
Earlier this summer, I had to work above a furnace in the BOP.
While strolling threw the menu, the device listed the temperature as 170 deg.
I muttered to myself, I need to stop complaining about 110 or 120 deg in the Caster.

Yeah, 170 sucks. I was doing work at a Nipsco plant on top of a running boiler, in July, during a heat wave. The maintenance guys came up and checked the temperature, we asked them how hot? Their answer was "we don't know, our thermometer only goes to 160 but we're guessing about 175". The room next door was about 120-130 it felt like walking into a cooler.

And of course, they had us outside at the Amaco refinery within spitting distance of the lake in January.

UPDATE: Worker who fell to death at U.S. Steel Gary Works identified - NewsBreak

GARY — A contractor died after a fall April 8 at U.S. Steel Gary Works, a company spokeswoman said. The contractor was conducting routine cleaning and was injured as a result of a fall, spokeswoman Meghan Cox...

www.newsbreak.com

That's what I did for a few years, did it at steel mills/generating stations/chemical co/refineries/and a bunch of others.

 

[actaeon277]

You mentioned that the truck in the video was huge, and there was nothing to compare it to. That applies to most of the video. The shear size is amazing. '

I do question one thing, it says in the roller mill the slabs are going 40 mpg. That doesn't seem right. At least for entry into it, or exit out of it. I only walked through that area a time or two, but they were going much slower on the way in, and way faster on the way out. Slow crawl on the feed and a couple hundred mph going on the roll. Are they talking average speed?



That's what my brother and nephew do, they work for an outside contractor lining tundishes.

.

Yeah, 170 sucks. I was doing work at a Nipsco plant on top of a running boiler, in July, during a heat wave. The maintenance guys came up and checked the temperature, we asked them how hot? Their answer was "we don't know, our thermometer only goes to 160 but we're guessing about 175". The room next door was about 120-130 it felt like walking into a cooler.

And of course, they had us outside at the Amaco refinery within spitting distance of the lake in January.


That's what I did for a few years, did it at steel mills/generating stations/chemical co/refineries/and a bunch of others.

I don't work at the roller mill. So I'm not as conversant with it.
But, in theory... the slab isn't moving as fast. Cause it's 9 inches thick, and 50-80 inches (approx) wide.
As they squish it down, thinner and thinner, it picks up speed.
Also, at first the slab is only 400 or so inches long.
But that becomes a roll of steel, so then it is moving REAL fast. I know, REAL fast isn't a technical term.
But like I said, I don't get to that side, the RICH side.
I'm on the poor-dirty side of the tracks.

 

[actaeon277]

Genuinely learning a lot about iron making here, I should have figured super alloy melting would be different but again no experience with traditional iron on my end.

For a lot of our aerospace alloys (high tempature resistant commonly used in turbine engines) we will often use vacuum-induction melting (VIM) followed by electroslag remelting (ESR) to further refine the microstructure of the alloy. Melting in a vacuum environment allows the chemistry to be very tightly controlled and especially with alloys utilizing aluminum and titanium which traditional non vacuum melting allows oxidation to occur.

Our "standard" Air Melt technique uses a electro arc furnace. Downside to vacuum melting is smaller heat sizes averaging about 10,000#.

Carpenter Technology outlines how high-tech melting creates high-performance metal alloys

Advanced melting techniques give metal alloys high-performance properties that standard air-melting processes can’t deliver.

www.machinedesign.com

10,000#



An empty ladle will weigh somewhere in excess of 160,000 pounds, depending on the ladle, and if it has slag in it.
Full they will be 600,000 pounds or a bit more.
Ladle is somewhere around 3 stories tall. So I imagine it might be harder to do the vacuum thing.


Some of our steels are for refrig and washers.. that's the cheap steel we make.

Some is automotive sheet. Still kinda cheap.

Then we get into D&I for soup cans. Well, any steel for food, but we call it soup can, or Cambells. That get's us more profit. More processing, and work, more cost, more profit.

Then we start to get to the big ticket stuff. Steel for Automotive safety cages. That's the big $$ stuff. Most of it didn't exist a couple decades ago. This stuff will have increased wear and tear on the machinery, and people, but it brings in around 10X as much $$

Somewhere in there is armor. I don't know where that falls in on the $$ scale.


We make our money, because of SCALE.
There are other mills to make smaller, specialized stuff. And they probably do a GREAT job.
But they have a hard time with certain metals, just because of the scale vs profit idea.

You want to make a car with a special metal, and there are only going to be 1,000 produced.
Might want to go to a mini-mill.
You want to build 5 battleships, 10 million soup cans, or such, we're you're man.

 

[rhamersley]

Gee, you guys have the exciting jobs. My time in the mill was mostly spent watching the operators watching the gages in the power station. Only excitement was when the turbine blower threw a blade in the 7th stage of 25 stages…quite the racket that made…

 

[actaeon277]

Oh, and about the truck, I meant there is "nothing to compare it to in the video"

Gee, you guys have the exciting jobs. My time in the mill was mostly spent watching the operators watching the gages in the power station. Only excitement was when the turbine blower threw a blade in the 7th stage of 25 stages…quite the racket that made…

An air conditioned job.
I dream of those.

 

[Timjoebillybob]

I don't work at the roller mill. So I'm not as conversant with it.
But, in theory... the slab isn't moving as fast. Cause it's 9 inches thick, and 50-80 inches (approx) wide.
As they squish it down, thinner and thinner, it picks up speed.
Also, at first the slab is only 400 or so inches long.
But that becomes a roll of steel, so then it is moving REAL fast. I know, REAL fast isn't a technical term.
But like I said, I don't get to that side, the RICH side.
I'm on the poor-dirty side of the tracks.

Yeah 9 inches in at 40 mph, take it down to 4.5 in. then it's 80 mph. When you get down to 1/8th of an inch you're talking close to 3000 mph. I know it's moving, but no where near that fast. And the stuff I saw going on the rolls was well less than an 1/8.

I worked the poor-dirty side of the track no matter where I worked doing that job. We did the jobs that the company employees wouldn't do. What's that you've got a grease pit that hasn't been cleaned out in 20 yrs? Sure no problem. And that's not an exaggeration. We did a sewer trap at a Kroger dairy plant down in Indy. They literally didn't know when the last time it had been cleaned if ever, it was about 15x15 and not sure how deep. We didn't get to the bottom. We made it about 8-10 ft below the outlet pipe and called it good. We were finding old metal milk bottle tops and that was several feet before we stopped. And that was actually one of the nicer cleaner jobs.

 

[rhamersley]

Oh, and about the truck, I meant there is "nothing to compare it to in the video"


An air conditioned job.
I dream of those.

Did have to go up to the boiler 6th level and look for a 900 lb steam leak with the boss. I mainly followed behind (I’d only been there a couple months) while he swung a 2x4 in front of him. It was real impressive when it clean cut the wood in half.

 

[actaeon277]

Well, this isn't our roll line, but I hear it looks like this when it goes bad

 

[actaeon277]

 

[marvin02]

We did the jobs that the company employees wouldn't do.

Many of those jobs were contracted out because of safety issues. The people familiar with the equipment knew better than to do some of the things that contractors did. I used to get in trouble on a regular basis informing outside folks of safety hazards.

 

[Dean C.]

10,000#



An empty ladle will weigh somewhere in excess of 160,000 pounds, depending on the ladle, and if it has slag in it.
Full they will be 600,000 pounds or a bit more.
Ladle is somewhere around 3 stories tall. So I imagine it might be harder to do the vacuum thing.


Some of our steels are for refrig and washers.. that's the cheap steel we make.

Some is automotive sheet. Still kinda cheap.

Then we get into D&I for soup cans. Well, any steel for food, but we call it soup can, or Cambells. That get's us more profit. More processing, and work, more cost, more profit.

Then we start to get to the big ticket stuff. Steel for Automotive safety cages. That's the big $$ stuff. Most of it didn't exist a couple decades ago. This stuff will have increased wear and tear on the machinery, and people, but it brings in around 10X as much $$

Somewhere in there is armor. I don't know where that falls in on the $$ scale.


We make our money, because of SCALE.
There are other mills to make smaller, specialized stuff. And they probably do a GREAT job.
But they have a hard time with certain metals, just because of the scale vs profit idea.

You want to make a car with a special metal, and there are only going to be 1,000 produced.
Might want to go to a mini-mill.
You want to build 5 battleships, 10 million soup cans, or such, we're you're man.

Good lord your guys ladle weights FOUR times what our biggest furnace can hold (40,000#~ roughly) I knew we were a small operation but I definitely had real idea. We tend to make up for it in cost however as most of our alloys are under patent or are part of the schematics for aircraft (makes it very hard to change later basically ensuring we have a customer as long as the airframe is produced). That being said for one of our higher end alloys just the raw material cost for a 40,000# heat is currently just a tad north of 1.2 million

 

[actaeon277]

It's nice to know the desire to stand close to something that can apparently maim or kill you for the purposes of getting footage to upload to YouTube is an international phenomenon.

Oh, it's not just for the internet.

We had a ladle coming down the tower, and it came out of one of the hooks.
When they picked it up, they "point loaded" it.
That means, instead of the trunion sitting IN the hook, the trunion was sitting on the POINT of the hook.
So, on the way down, it came out.
The ladle wedged into the building, keeping it in place. So one side the trunion is in the hook, the other side, the building is holding the ladle.
The ladle, somewhere above 160,000 pounds is at a 20 or so degree list. It's still around 2 stories in the air. It's still nice and hot, and it probably still had a couple tons of slag.
So, after a while, all the "important" bosses go to look at it.
Some, standing almost under it.
One motions to me, "You want to come closer and get a better look?"

"Nah. I'm okay. If that thing comes out of the other hook, I don't want to die".

"But it's empty".

"And it still weighs over 80 tons, the outside is 700 degrees, and the slag inside is over 2800 degrees. I'm good here."


He started to think about it, and then backed away.

 

[Timjoebillybob]

Well, this isn't our roll line, but I hear it looks like this when it goes bad

Like I said I only walked through that area a time or two, never seen anything like that. And I never want to in person. Although those guy ran just a bit and stopped. Sorry, my ass wouldn't stop until it was in the drivers seat of my car.

Many of those jobs were contracted out because of safety issues. The people familiar with the equipment knew better than to do some of the things that contractors did. I used to get in trouble on a regular basis informing outside folks of safety hazards.

Yeah, I know. Cleaning a tank at a chemical company, "you have to wear a full hazmat '"gumby suit"(sealed head to toe rubber acid resistant suit) with a full face supplied air mask", "why what was in the tank?". "they don't know it's an old tank and they lost the records, it's just a precaution". Sure...

 

[marvin02]

Those videos illustrate why I preferred the dirty (primary production) side of the mill. Those nice "clean" rolling mills scared me. In addition to the very high speed machinery you also had extensive high pressure hydraulic systems.

BTW - the same guys who loved working in finishing would be replacing their shoes every 3-4 months because of the hydraulic fluids used would eat the leather. The floors would sometimes be slippery enough to skate on.

The motto primary production was. "Never trust air you can't see" because Carbon Monoxide was one of the biggest dangers and because we didn't know any other kind.

My kids still remember when I was working a double and my wife brought out pizza for the whole crew. When I met her at the gate I had not cleaned up and my kids were scared. I had burning goggles on the top of my helmet, my face was black except where the goggles had covered my eyes and my greens were covered in coke and coal dust.

 

[actaeon277]

Good lord your guys ladle weights FOUR times what our biggest furnace can hold (40,000#~ roughly) I knew we were a small operation but I definitely had real idea. We tend to make up for it in cost however as most of our alloys are under patent or are part of the schematics for aircraft (makes it very hard to change later basically ensuring we have a customer as long as the airframe is produced). That being said for one of our higher end alloys just the raw material cost for a 40,000# heat is currently just a tad north of 1.2 million

I went to my dad's company for his retirement party.
I was impressed with the way they treated their employees, and the place was clean. I almost cried.
But I looked at an overhead crane, and I laughed.
My dad asked what I was laughing at.
Crane limit was 10 tons.


Our AUXILIARY hooks are rated to 25 tons, and 75 tons.


Main hooks are either 325, or 350 tons, I forget.

 

[actaeon277]

Those videos illustrate why I preferred the dirty (primary production) side of the mill. Those nice "clean" rolling mills scared me. In addition to the very high speed machinery you also had extensive high pressure hydraulic systems.

BTW - the same guys who loved working in finishing would be replacing their shoes every 3-4 months because of the hydraulic fluids used would eat the leather. The floors would sometimes be slippery enough to skate on.

The motto primary production was. "Never trust air you can't see" because Carbon Monoxide was one of the biggest dangers and because we didn't know any other kind.

My kids still remember when I was working a double and my wife brought out pizza for the whole crew. When I met her at the gate I had not cleaned up and my kids were scared. I had burning goggles on the top of my helmet, my face was black except where the goggles had covered my eyes and my greens were covered in coke and coal dust.

It's good for kids to find out what their dad does to put food on the table.

 

[actaeon277]

This isn't one of ours, there's a limit to internet photos I can find, and the mill gets REAL angry at people taking/posting pics.

But I think this is good for a size comparison

 

[Timjoebillybob]

This isn't one of ours, there's a limit to internet photos I can find, and the mill gets REAL angry at people taking/posting pics.

But I think this is good for a size comparison

View attachment 155812

Yeah, I still don't get why you wouldn't want to be riding a trike around those.

 

[marvin02]

This isn't one of ours, there's a limit to internet photos I can find, and the mill gets REAL angry at people taking/posting pics.

But I think this is good for a size comparison

View attachment 155812

We had a collision between one of those and a locomotive. The truck bed was skewed and looked like the frame was bent, but he drove away. They had to tow the loco, mostly because the corner of the truck bed punched a hole in the radiator for the diesel.

These slag haulers used recycled tires from jets on the small end. 3 tires on each side and they were liquid filled.



They backed up to a pot full of slag, lifted the pot using hydraulics, then took it out to a field and dumped them. The slag would be broken up into small pieces and used for fill under road beds and other places, IIRC.

 

[Mr. Habib]

Great stuff Act. Next, how about posting videos from a Tupperware factory so the Glock fan boys don't feel left out!