This Technicolor film, produced by the U.S. Steel Corporation, opens with a panoramic view of steel mills (:28). They rely on iron ore (:48), high-grade coke baked from bituminous coal and limestone (:49). The first step in producing steel is to make iron in the blast furnace (1:38), where raw materials are loaded into skip cars (1:48-2:00). Inside the furnace, chemical reactions occur (2:31). An animation is shown (2:42-3:32) of the lime combining with impurities in the ore and coke to form slag. Periodically, this waste material is removed (3:30). The separated molten white hot iron is released into an insulted transfer car (3:46-4:12), where it is taken to a steel-making furnaces (4:18). The transfer car pours the liquid metal (4:24-4:35) into a ladle, which is taken to the open hearth furnace (4:37). To begin this process, a charging machine loads limestone, iron ore, and steel scrap into the furnace (4:45) first, followed by a pour from the ladle (5:06). In the control room, a wall of gauges is consulted to make sure the process is on track (5:17). Slag separates from the steel (5:50). The temperature is taken (6:43). At the rear of the furnace is a tapping hole used (7:15) to blow out the plug. The wire from the charge is connected to a battery (7:28) and detonated (7:45), releasing the white-hot steel (7:50). Adding chromium or nickel alloys (8:11) alters carbon steel.
A basic oxygen furnace (8:40) produces high-quality steel faster. The molten steel is poured in (8:47), followed by scrap (9:05). The chemical and physical reactions quickly take place (9:18) and the furnace is ready to pour (9:29).An electric arc furnace (9:41) is used to make stainless steel. It’s charged with scrap (9:49) as the top is removed and then replaced by machinery (10:02). When the electricity is turned on, the cables sway (10:13). Molten steel is shown (10:35). Nickel, chromium, tungsten, vanadium, or other alloys are added to make special steel (10:52). The charging machine adds limestone to remove impurities (11:06) before the furnace tilts to pour steel into the ladle (11:30). Regardless of the method, the steel next moves to the teeming area (12:00), where it’s poured into cast iron molds (12:14). The ingots are moved to the stripping stand (12:24-12:49), where hooks remove the ingot. It’s next put into a soaking pit for reheating to 2,300 degrees (12:51) for rolling into a bloom (structural steel); a billet (semi-finished steel tubes for such things as tools, hardware, and wire); or a slab (14:50) for such things as hulls, cranes, and storage tanks. The slab is reheated for rolling in the reheat furnace (15:38), sent to the scale breaker (15:53), through the roughing stand rollers (16:04), to the runout table where it’s sprayed with cold water (16:35). This hot-rolled steel can be further processed as pickled, cold-reduced, annealed, temper-rolled, galvanized, or tin coated. A cold rolled coil is shipped (17:22). The many uses of finished steel are summarized.
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example like: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
