Production Of Ingots Research Articles

The Growth of the Australian Iron and Steel Industry

Between 1929 and 1939 the production of pig iron and steel ingots in Australia increased threefold an the capacity of the iron and steel industry increased by an even greater amount. The production of pig iron from the then existing plants (The Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Ltd., at Newcastle, Hoskins Iron and Steel Works, at Lithgow, and Australian Iron and Steel Ltd., at Port Kembla) was 461,110 tons in 1928-29. By 1939 it had increased to 1,243,393 tons. Over the same period the production of steel ingots increased from 432,773 tons to 1,263,878 tons. There is a remarkable story behind these substantial increases. In spite of the efforts of the pioneers who had struggled for many years to establish iron and steel smelting in Australia, the industry can scarcely be said to have existed in 1915. Only one town, Lithgow, on the mountainous western coalfield of New South Wales and about 100 miles inland from Sydney, had managed to sustain a smelting industry of sorts for any length of time. Cheap and plentiful fuel here gave the industry its initial impetus; later it was kept alive and even expanded, partly by the tenacity and optimism of its owners and partly by assistance from the government. But Lithgow too in due course went the way of former inland smelting centres. Its inferior position, for the assembly of raw material and for the distribution of finished products, reduced its chances of becoming a prosperous centre. Its production had never been large and the output in its best year was only a fraction of the total Australian demand. Long before 1929 the owners of the Lithgow plant had realized that they were ill-placed to compete with an iron and steel plant on either of the coastal coalfields of New South Wales?the Hunter Valley field to the north of Sydney or the Illawarra field to the south?and when such a plant was set up at Newcastle in 1915, at the seaward end of the Hunter Valley Field, the Lithgow owners at once put in motion the first stages of a plan which culminated in 1928-30 in the migration of the industry from the valley. A new site for blast furnaces and steel plant was found at Port Kembla on the Illawarra Coalfield and, with the passing of Lithgow, Australia lost its only inland centre of heavy industry. All subsequent developments have occurred at or near tidewater and are an expression of coastal influences. Lithgow's rise and fall belong to an early phase in the history of the industry and it had all but vanished from the scene in 1929. But the gap was more than filled by its Port Kembla successor, Australian Iron and Steel Ltd., which together with the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Ltd.,a at

NATIONAL METALLURGICAL LABORATORY OF INDIA

THAT India possesses great natural advantages for the production of iron and steel there is no doubt. She has rich and vast deposits of iron ore, exceeding both in quality and quantity the ores found in many States of Europe and America. These ores are reckoned to be more than sufficient for the requirements of India herself for nearly a thousand years. In spite of this, India's yearly production of steel ingots and castings in 1939 was only one million tons. The United States are producing ½ ton of steel per man, the United Kingdom about and Japan ton per man. In India, if the target is kept as low as 1/50 ton per man, she will have to produce about eight million tons of steel a year. This comparison indicates beyond a shadow of doubt that India's iron and steel industry is in an extremely backward state. Only the systematic and thorough development of the iron and steel industry, which is a basic and key industry as well as a defence industry, can facilitate the transition of India from the agricultural to the industrial stage by stimulating the growth of a number of associate or allied industries. In order to ensure the progress and expansion of India's metallurgical industries, it was decided by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1942 that a National Metallurgical Laboratory should be established in India. Accordingly, a Laboratory Planning Committee, under the chairmanship of Sir J. J. Ghandy, director of the Tata Industries, Ltd., was constituted to formulate a scheme. A tentative scheme was prepared and circulated to technical experts, industrialists, and others in 1945. This scheme was later altered on the basis of the suggestions and comments received, and principally on the basis of the funds available. The final scheme recently prepared was approved on September 17, 1946, by the governing body of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

Application of Research in Industry

IN his address "The Application of Research" to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce on March 31, Dr. Andrew McCance said that we should not think of research merely in terms of great laboratories equipped with intricate and expensive apparatus and staffed by scientific wizards aloof from mundane affairs. Valuable information can often be obtained with the simplest equipment, and scientific men are ordinary men whose judgment has been trained to exclude prejudice and to accept only those conclusions which are supported by facts. As example, he referred to investigations on temperature variations in blast furnaces, which have led to a great increase in regularity of output and a corresponding economy in coke consumption. The structure of a research association depends on the organization of the industry. With an industry such as the iron and steel industry, in which the main production comes from a number of large units, each unit can usually make a material contribution to the common cause by undertaking in its own research department a share of the investigations required into a specific problem. Recently, however, this industry has decided to form a new research association, and in future finance for research within the industry in Great Britain will be obtained by a voluntary levy on the ingot production of all producers in the federation. All the work is controlled by a number of committees, dealing with such subjects as blast furnaces, rolling mills, alloy steels, corrosion, etc., and Dr. McCance referred in particular to the work of the Hair Line Crack Committee dealing with the minute cracks which occur in high tensile alloy steel and their prevention, as illustrating the potentialities of co-operative research. This investigation was founded on an effective scheme of co-operation between industrial and university research laboratories.

Relation between Seasonal Amplitudes and the Level of Production—An Application to the Production of Steel Ingots

THERE ARE three possible relationships between the business cycle and seasonal amplitudes of production. A particular relationship will depend on the circumstances surrounding an individual product. In the case of steel, for example, the amplitudes of seasonal fluctuations tend to become larger as the general demand for that product declines. This tendency is entirely reasonable in view of modern business practices. During periods of recession business men often resort to hand-to-mouth buying; they do not build up stocks; they are doubtful of the future. Production, therefore, is largely seasonal in nature, and demand varies widely from month to month. During the upswing of the cycle seasonal fluctuations assume a different character. Demand increases over an extended period of time; business men become increasingly optimistic; they build stocks; the policy of hand-to-mouth buying is discarded. Because of the continued increase in demand, production is largely cyclical in nature, and month-to-month variations diminish as the peak of the cycle is approached. Moreover, seasonal amplitudes of steel production must decrease because of the fixed physical capacity which is present at a given point of time. A second kind of relationship may exist. In the case of certain luxury goods, for example, seasonal amplitudes of production increase as the peak of the business cycle is approached. Here the circumstances are different, for the sale of these goods depends, in a large measure, on the purchasing power of consumers. When purchasing power is low or declining the consumer does not easily part with his money, either in or out of season. On the other hand, when the consumer's pockets are well filled his purchases in season are large. Finally, there are some types of products whose seasonal amplitudes of production are but little affected, if at all, by general business conditions. A case in point is to be found in the motion picture industry, where the number of domestic feature-length films produced varies but little between the years of prosperity and the years of depression. General recognition of the fact that seasonal patterns change in response to one or more causal factors has resulted in newer and more

Seasonal Variation in the Production of Steel Ingots

Seasonal Variation in the Production of Steel Ingots

(1) Ingots and Ingot Moulds (2) Industrial Electro-metallurgy, including Electrolytic and Electro-thermal Processes

(1) THE authors of this book are respectively the steel-maker and works manager at one of the large Sheffield steel works, and their book is dedicated to the workmen in appreciation of their efforts to reach the ideal in actual work. They state that a considerable part of it was prepared for teaching purposes, and that the manuscript sheets have been freely criticised by men whose business it is to make steel ingots. As they point out, there is no way of studying the conditions which lead to the production of good and bad ingots more instructive than that of making ingots themselves, according to well-defined variations of the processes of ingot-making, and cutting- or breaking them in order to observe their qualities. In former days a good opportunity for such observations was enjoyed at negligible cost by the crucible steel melter, when ingots were "topped "down until the pipe or other evidences of unsoundness were broken away. Such a man knew what the conditions of casting were; he was familiar with the state of the ingot mould; he saw daily perhaps from twenty to forty ingots “topped” down to nearly half their length, and his eye was trained to notice minute differences in the appearance of the fractured surfaces. Such opportunities scarcely exist to-day, because ingots are only rarely “topped.” (1) Ingots and Ingot Moulds. By A. W. Brearley H. Brearley. Pp. xv + 218. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1918.) Price 16s. net. (2) Industrial Electro-metallurgy, including Electrolytic and Electro-thermal Processes. By Dr. E. K. Rideal. Pp. xii + 247. ("Industrial Chemistry".) (London: Baillière, Tindall, and Cox, 1918.) Price 7s. 6d. net.

Production of bessemer steel ingots and rails in the United States in 1895

Production of bessemer steel ingots and rails in the United States in 1895