biggest solid slug of metal?

No real reason... just curious... What's the biggest chunk of solid metal that you seen? Is there some massive 10 foot cube somewhere?

Reply to
asdl
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Probably not he biggest but quite interesting is the Delhi Iron Pillar

Regards,

Boris Mohar

Got Knock? - see: Viatrack Printed Circuit Designs

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Reply to
Boris Mohar

I owned an 18" dia by 6 foot steel bar for a few days, an (unwanted) part of an auction lot. I didn't get it moved by the deadline and the auctioneer "confiscated" it. Not sure what I could have done with it. Maybe bore a replica cannon.

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

A 10' cube would be bush legue. If you want to see some heavy iron, take a tour of a modern container ship yard.

Reply to
Glenn Ashmore

In a copy billion years the earth core will be a fairly large & solid chuck. (I believe it's liquid right now) :-)

I don't remember if the moons core is solid yet, or if it's even iron/nickel)

V> No real reason... just curious... What's the biggest chunk

Reply to
Vince Iorio

In the '70s I regularly went into the USS South Works plant in Chicago and I recall that a crane broke at the #2 BOP shop resulting in a "strawberry" of about 250 tons. When the crane broke, they pushed it to the end of the bay and let it "cool" the next day it had cooled enough to let a craneman make the repairs. They then took the cooled ladle and dumped the solid steel in to the slag pit, where a laborer spent the rest of the week cutting it up into smaller piece with an oxygen lance. They used to call these things "strawberries" because they were shaped like the bottom of a strawberry and the firebrick left a pattern on the steel that added to the "illusion".

South Works at that time was primarily a structural mill and they made ingots for rolling at USS Gary. At the #2 BOP shop, they tapped about

25-30 heats per shift (if I remember correctly) of about 250 tons per heat. Some of the ingots they poured were huge, 78"x38"x96". I think that the ingot weighed in around 40 tons. I think to molds weighed in about 85-90,000#.

BTW a 10 cube of steel would weigh > No real reason... just curious... What's the biggest chunk

Reply to
Greg Postma

Hey, I was there several times in the '70s, too. Man, that place could really make you get religion.

Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

The biggest hunks of steel I have seen up close were at a former employers when they made a compression mold in two halves to make a Freightliner full size semi-truck hood in one 'hit'. The press it went into stood 35-40 feet high and the plant had to have a 'basement' dug out to allow the machine to operate with the mold split line at roughly

4 feet above floor level.

The blocks were easily 18 feet on each side and probably 6 feet thick and were machined out of a solid block of die steel. They were also heated to a couple of hundred degrees in order to 'cure' the material (GRP) after it had been formed into the required shape.

Reply to
Larry Green

Not cubes but some serious sized steel components were used here:

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Tom

Reply to
Tom

What I remember from the Bethlehem Steel Burns Harbor plant (East of Gary Indiana) were the ingots, I think that is what they were called. I never worked in that part of the plant. They were, as I remember them, maybe 3 feet square, and around 10 feet high. They poured molten steel into molds, and after it cooled some, removed the mold and rolled them into slabs, which were like very thick steel plate. This was a 24/7 process. After that they might be rolled into plate or sheet.

Everything in the steel mill was on a heroic scale, which I think was why I took the job. I remember working there six months before I saw a crane of less than 50 ton capacity, and many of them were 350 ton capacity, to pick up huge ladles of molten steel. Two people were killed there in the year and a half that I worked there, including one at a place I walked by every day. There was a burned spot where the accident was. A very rough and dangerous place.

Richard

asdl wrote:

Reply to
Richard Ferguson

Reply to
Greg Postma

Being on the pouring floor of a continous casting line with 250 tons of liquid steel in a ladle above you.

Was part of the radiation safety crew monitoring the radiation gaugeing system during startup.

Hugh

Reply to
Hugh Prescott

Richard Ferguson wrote: > Everything in the steel mill was on a heroic scale, which I think was

You are very correct, EVERYTHING in a steel mill is of heroic proportions. In my misspent youth, I drove a truck for my dad and I hauled firebrick into the "basic" end of all the mills in the CHicago area. Places like Charter Electric, USS So. Works, USS Joliet, USS Waukegan, USS Gary, Republic, Wisconsin Steel, Interlake Iron, Interlake Coke, Vulcan Mold, Interlake(Acme) Steel, Calumet Steel, J&L(LTV), Inland, Midwest Steel, Valley Mold, Bethlehem, Birmingham Bolt, Keystone WIre in Peoria, Northwestern Steel in Sterling, and a couple of others whose names I don't remember. It the time all, of these mills were pouring ingots (casters hadn't been invented yet). It was amazing to drive through yards that were acre after acre of ingots stacked 20-30 feet high. Millions of tons, just sitting there.

I do recall a small mill in Lemont Ill, Ceco Steel that had an electric furnace and the made rebar. Their ingots were 4"x4"x48". After seeing the huge ingots at big mills, Ceco's ingots looked like paper weights.

In the 70's the technologies were right out of the stone age. They would take the ingots, heat them in the soaking pits, send them to the blooming mill, the slab mill, and then on to on to the plate,rod,wire,merchant, rail or structural mill for rolling in to the finished product. Now they make the steel in the furnace and send it right to the caster and on to the rolling mill, never letting the steel get cold. What a differance.

Reply to
Greg Postma

Hey ASDL,

Interesting question!! Ingots poured from raw molten steel in a steel mill are a pretty good size. A railway flat car can only fit 4 of them for pouring. They are sort of "cow bell" shaped, and my guess is they are about 12' high, and 8' X 8' at the bottom, tapering to 6'X5' at the top,, but that's just a rough guess. I only saw them from a distance of maybe 100 feet. Still bright red hot when knocked out of the ingot mold 16 hours after the pour.

Poured cast iron engine blocks for huge diesels are much larger, but not "solid" as I think you meant. Steam locomotive frames were pretty big also. Solid lead keels on big sail boats can get pretty big too.

Take care.

Brian Laws>No real reason... just curious... What's the biggest chunk

Reply to
Brian Lawson

I think I was there three times, the first on an AISI press junket with a crowd from the general press (Time, Newsweek, The NYT, etc.), and it was one of the funniest things I remember from those days. Those people were freaked out, in the true sense.

But anybody would be impressed. It's one of those monstrous operations that can make you feel really small and vulnerable.

I remember the thick dust (it was in most steel plants I visited in those days). And there was that tall guy with the horns and the flames. 'Looked like he was having a hell of a good time...

Damned dangerous business, still.

Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Sure - they make massive gears that are that easily. To process, use verticle lathes and mills. Martin

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

Holy Mackerel, that is quite a hunk of machinery. Wow!

Lane

Reply to
Lane

40 tonnes. I got to cut it up into strips about 6 months ago. about 11 meters long, just over 3 meters wide, and 160mm thick, IIRC.
Reply to
Wayne Bengtsson

You're holding on the rest of the good stuff, Tom. Great find.

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Ned Simmons

Reply to
Ned Simmons

Check out my other post on the huge engine or just click here:

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I'm sure something big was used in there somewhere. :):)

Regards, Joe Agro, Jr.

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V8013

Reply to
Joe AutoDrill

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