Commercial Production of Sound Steel Ingots.

INTRODUCTION. IN presenting this paper I will attempt to answer certain questions proposed at this meeting and describe and illustrate methods of producing sound steel in an economical and hence commercial manner, which are adaptable to the production of practically all steel manufacturers, by readily effected rational changes in the methods of casting, cooling, and subsequent handling of the ingots. In some of the high-grade mills of America, where it is essential to obtain perfectly sound billets or blooms, it is the practice to discard from 35 to 40 per cent. of the crop- or pipe-end, and even with this excessive discard, secondary pipe or shrinkage-cavities are frequently discovered during subsequent working of the blooms and billets into their various manufactured products. The usual discard of from 10 to 20 per cent. from the crop-end of the ingot, which is made by the present generally employed methods of form and solidifying of the castings, certainly does not give the slightest assurance of the saleable product being physically sound or chemically homogeneous. I am aware that in the past there has been and at the present time there still is a decided difference of expert opinion as to what constitutes physically sound steel.