[TheForge] Re: Splitting steel

Sun May 18 13:45:01 2003

Cold shuts  make me cringe.  Imagine a 7000.00 custom trailer with a piece
of 10" ships channel that splits 8.5 feet longitudinally about 3" from the
edge.  Even with the plasma cutter the rework is a 2 day job.  I use about a
500,000 pounds of steel a year, through my fabrication shop.  I now require
all my suppliers to provide certificates of conformity.  You will find that
there are two grades of steel, those made stateside and in Canada, and those
made in places like Brazil, Taiwan, Korea and other places.  Quality control
from any of those places is minimal at best.

For forging work, I buy Birmingham, or Cascade Rolling mills product, and I
have never had a problem.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Spencer" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2003 10:02 AM
Subject: [TheForge] Re: Splitting steel

> > It sounds like your bar has a rolled inclusion or cold crack from
> > being rolled too cold or a fold in the end of the piece that was
> > rolled out long enough to take up your bar.
>
>
> I've never been in a continuous process steel mill so I don't know
> where cold shuts might arise there but I have been in an older style
> mill.  The open hearth furnace was dumped into a ladle, the ladle
> emptied into moulds ca. 2'x2'x10'.  The resulting billet got trimmed
> and rolled into a thing about 10"x18" x 20 or more feet long before
> going to the main rolling mill.
>
> When I was in the rolling mill, it had shut down half an hour before
> because a hot railroad rail had missed a roll and something like 100
> yards of rail were snarled like spilled spagetti in, through and under
> maybe a half acre of machinery.  While watching the guy with a cutting
> torch trying to clean this up, I realized that my foot was getting
> warm.  Look down.  There's a little offcut there on the floor near my
> foot, 10"x18"x30", still red hot.
>
> This little offcut was, they told me, chopped off the 20'  billet
> before starting it into the rolls because the pucker on the end would
> get closed up and become a cold shut.  Had a further look at the
> offcut and yes, the pucker on the end (from the first size reduction
> before going to the main rolling mill) was several inches deep and
> held a lot of scale and uidentifiable crud.
>
> A 10x18x30 chunk, if left in place to be rolled out, would make a
> *lot* of defective 3/4" round or 2" angle.
>
> - Mike
>
> --
> Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada
>
> [email protected]
> http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/
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