Large Ingots

THE casting of steel in large molds brings into play all of the undesirable effects that result inevitably from slow cooling. The origin of the molten metal, whether basic or acid open hearth or electric furnace, has little if anything to do with the phenomena involved. If the quantity of molten metal to be cast in a single mold is large enough, there is very little one can do about it-the metal will cool so slowly that 'nothing one can do, other than to provide as good feeding as practicable from an adequate reservoir of metal in the sink head, will be of any avail. Recently we have had occasion to cast a 108-in. octagon ingot weighing 545,700 lb, necessitating the combining of metal from three 100-ton open-hearth heats. This is one of the largest ingots ever made. The body of the ingot weighed 448,800 lb, which includes a bottom pool of about 7500 lb of metal, and the sink-head weight was 96,900 lb, or about 18 pct of the total weight.