Ingot
Ingots are large rough castings designed for storage and transportation. The shape usually resembles a rectangle or square with generous fillets. They are tapered, usually with the big-end-down. [2]
Semi-finished casting products are intermediate castings produced in a steel millthat need further processing before being finished goods. There are four types: ingots, blooms, billets, and slabs. [1]
Ingots are large rough castings designed for storage and transportation. The shape usually resembles a rectangle or square with generous fillets. They are tapered, usually with the big-end-down. [2]
In the era of commercial wrought iron, blooms were slag-riddled iron castings poured in a bloomery before being worked into wrought iron. In the era of commercial steel, blooms are intermediate-stage pieces of steel produced by a first pass of rolling (in a blooming mill) that works the ingots down to a smaller cross-sectional area, but still greater than 36 in2 (230 cm2). [1] Blooms are usually further processed via rotary piercing, structural shape rolling and profile rolling. Common final products include structural shapes, rails, rods, and seamless pipes. [3]
A billet is a length of metal that has a round or square cross-section, with an area less than 36 in2 (230 cm2). Billets are created directly via continuous casting or extrusion or indirectly via hot rolling an ingot or bloom. [1] [2] [4] Billets are further processed via profile rolling and drawing. Final products include bar stock and wire. [3]
Centrifugal casting is also used to produce short circular tubes as billets, usually to achieve a precise metallurgical structure. They are commonly used as cylinder sleeves where the inner and outer diameters are ground and machined to length. Because their size is not modified significantly, they are not always classified as semi-finished casting products.
A slab is a length of metal that is rectangular in cross-section. The slab is created directly by continuous casting or indirectly by rolling an ingot on a slabbing mill. [1] Slabs are usually further processed via flat rolling, skelping, and pipe rolling. Common final products include sheet metal, plates, strip metal, pipes, and tubes. [3] Slab are mainly produced through blast furnace route. One of the reasons to preferably produce slab through BF route is to achieve high quality. [5]
Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon with improved strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels, which are resistant to corrosion and oxidation, typically need an additional 11% chromium. Because of its high tensile strength and low cost, steel is used in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, trains, cars, bicycles, machines, electrical appliances, furniture, and weapons.
Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is an intermediate good used by the iron industry in the production of steel, which is developed by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with silica and other constituents of dross, which makes it brittle and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications.
Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content in contrast to that of cast iron. It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions, which give it a wood-like "grain" that is visible when it is etched, rusted, or bent to failure. Wrought iron is tough, malleable, ductile, corrosion resistant, and easily forge welded, but is more difficult to weld electrically.
Forging is a manufacturing process involving the shaping of metal using localized compressive forces. The blows are delivered with a hammer or a die. Forging is often classified according to the temperature at which it is performed: cold forging, warm forging, or hot forging. For the latter two, the metal is heated, usually in a forge. Forged parts can range in weight from less than a kilogram to hundreds of metric tons. Forging has been done by smiths for millennia; the traditional products were kitchenware, hardware, hand tools, edged weapons, cymbals, and jewellery.
An ingot is a piece of relatively pure material, usually metal, that is cast into a shape suitable for further processing. In steelmaking, it is the first step among semi-finished casting products. Ingots usually require a second procedure of shaping, such as cold/hot working, cutting, or milling to produce a useful final product. Non-metallic and semiconductor materials prepared in bulk form may also be referred to as ingots, particularly when cast by mold based methods. Precious metal ingots can be used as currency, or as a currency reserve, as with gold bars.
Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile by pushing material through a die of the desired cross-section. Its two main advantages over other manufacturing processes are its ability to create very complex cross-sections; and to work materials that are brittle, because the material encounters only compressive and shear stresses. It also creates excellent surface finish and gives considerable freedom of form in the design process.
A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-finished casting products are made from molten pig iron or from scrap.
Metal fabrication is the creation of metal structures by cutting, bending and assembling processes. It is a value-added process involving the creation of machines, parts, and structures from various raw materials.
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminum and cast iron. However, other metals, such as bronze, brass, steel, magnesium, and zinc, are also used to produce castings in foundries. In this process, parts of desired shapes and sizes can be formed.
Tinning is the process of thinly coating sheets of wrought iron or steel with tin, and the resulting product is known as tinplate. The term is also widely used for the different process of coating a metal with solder before soldering.
Continuous casting, also called strand casting, is the process whereby molten metal is solidified into a "semifinished" billet, bloom, or slab for subsequent rolling in the finishing mills. Prior to the introduction of continuous casting in the 1950s, steel was poured into stationary molds to form ingots. Since then, "continuous casting" has evolved to achieve improved yield, quality, productivity and cost efficiency. It allows lower-cost production of metal sections with better quality, due to the inherently lower costs of continuous, standardised production of a product, as well as providing increased control over the process through automation. This process is used most frequently to cast steel. Aluminium and copper are also continuously cast.
In metalworking, rolling is a metal forming process in which metal stock is passed through one or more pairs of rolls to reduce the thickness, to make the thickness uniform, and/or to impart a desired mechanical property. The concept is similar to the rolling of dough. Rolling is classified according to the temperature of the metal rolled. If the temperature of the metal is above its recrystallization temperature, then the process is known as hot rolling. If the temperature of the metal is below its recrystallization temperature, the process is known as cold rolling. In terms of usage, hot rolling processes more tonnage than any other manufacturing process, and cold rolling processes the most tonnage out of all cold working processes. Roll stands holding pairs of rolls are grouped together into rolling mills that can quickly process metal, typically steel, into products such as structural steel, bar stock, and rails. Most steel mills have rolling mill divisions that convert the semi-finished casting products into finished products.
The Park Gate Iron and Steel Company was a British company that smelted iron ore and turned it into rolled steel and semi-finished casting products. Its works was at Parkgate, South Yorkshire on a triangular site bounded on two sides by the main road between Rotherham and Barnsley (A633) and the North Midland Railway main line between Rotherham Masborough and Cudworth. It also operated ironstone quarries in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.
Brown Bayley Steels was a steel-making company established in Sheffield, England in 1871, as Brown, Bayley & Dixon. They occupied a site on Leeds Road which was later occupied by the Don Valley sports stadium. The firm was founded by George Brown, Nephew of "John Brown" of the firm John Brown & Company. The firm manufactured Bessemer steel and railway tracks.
Bar stock, also (colloquially) known as blank, slug or billet, is a common form of raw purified metal, used by industry to manufacture metal parts and products. Bar stock is available in a variety of extrusion shapes and lengths. The most common shapes are round, rectangular, square and hexagonal. A bar is characterised by an "enclosed invariant convex cross-section", meaning that pipes, angle stock and objects with varying diameter are not considered bar stock.
Kamensk-Uralsky Metallurgical Works J.S.Co. (KUMZ) is one of the town-forming enterprises of Kamensk-Uralsky, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. KUMZ was founded especially for supplying of aerospace industry with semi-finished products in aluminium and magnesium alloys. Currently, the plant produces aluminium alloy billets, forged and rolled plates, roll bond heat exchangers, extruded rods, bars, tubes, drill pipes, profiles, die-forgings.
Electrotherm (India) Limited (Ltd.) is an Indian technology conglomerate. Its operations span across many different segments of the manufacturing and process industries, including steelmaking, foundry, heat treatment, the design and manufacturing of electric vehicles, and the energy industry, ranging from more energy-efficient alternatives to renewable energy. It is also India's largest manufacturer of induction furnaces.
Centrifugal casting or rotocasting is a casting technique that is typically used to cast thin-walled cylinders. It is typically used to cast materials such as metals, glass, and concrete. A high quality is attainable by control of metallurgy and crystal structure. Unlike most other casting techniques, centrifugal casting is chiefly used to manufacture rotationally symmetric stock materials in standard sizes for further machining, rather than shaped parts tailored to a particular end-use.
Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works, Public Joint Stock Company (PJSC) “Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works” is an integrated steelmaking enterprise comprising OJSC Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works and JV Metalen LLC. Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works is a major employer of the city Yenakiieve in Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine. The works is located in the vicinity of the railway station Yenakiieve and is 60 km from Donetsk.
Khouzestan Steel Company (KSC) is an Iranian steel manufacturing company located in the major city of Ahvaz. It is currently the second-largest producer of raw steel in Iran, following Isfahan Mobarakeh Steel Company. The company's factory, spanning 8.3 square kilometers, is situated near Ahvaz, and its headquarters are also located in Ahvaz.