Pictorial Story of the Steel Industry
Mining Ore, Island of Cuba. (See Page 413.)
The immense veins of magnetic ore lie close to the surface and are mined or quarried by working along a series of benches or ledges.
Loading Ore, Island of Cuba. (See Page 413.)
The ore is loaded into small buggies at the mines and run down an inclined plane, where it is dumped into railroad cars for transportation to the shipping wharves, seventeen miles distant.
Pig Iron Casting Machine. (See Page 414.)
No. 1 casting machine has a capacity of 1,000 tons per day. There are 180 molds, each pig weighing about 125 pounds.
No. 2 machine has a capacity of 1,800 tons per day. It has 278 molds, each for 125-pound pig.
Product, low phosphorus, Bessemer and basic, or high phosphorus machine-cast pig iron.
Open-Hearth Furnace Stock Yard. (See Page 414.)
The raw materials for the open-hearth furnaces are received on elevated railroad tracks graded and piled preparatory to sending to the furnaces. Yard No. 1 is 950 feet long and 87 feet wide, and is served by three electric traveling cranes of twenty tons and sixty tons capacity. Yard No. 2 is 790 feet long and 84 feet wide, and is served by two ten-ton electric traveling cranes.
Open-Hearth Furnaces. (See Page 416.)
No. 1 open-hearth plant consists of twelve furnaces, two ten-ton, two twenty-ton, five forty-ton and two fifty-ton basic furnaces and one forty-ton acid furnace with gas producers. Length of floor, 623 feet.
No. 2 plant consists of ten fifty-ton furnaces with gas producers. Length of floor, 890 feet.
Charging Floor of Open-Hearth Furnaces. (See Page 416.)
The stock is delivered to the charging floor in iron boxes loaded on narrow-gauge buggies, and is charged into the furnaces by electric charging machines. Length of floor of No. 1 open-hearth plant, 477 feet; width, 28 feet. Length of floor of No. 2 open-hearth plant, 890 feet; width, 50 feet.
Blast Furnace Storage Plant. (See Page 417.)
The coal, coke, ore, etc., is delivered direct by the railroad cars under a traveling cantilever crane running on tracks laid the length of a wharf and is dumped from the cars through chutes into buckets and piled until needed at the furnaces. The plant is capable of storing over 1,000,000 tons of material.
Blast Furnaces. (See Page 417.)
Showing stock house, blowing-engine house, etc. Plant consists of four furnaces 70 feet high, 18-foot boshet and 12-foot hearth. One furnace 90 feet high, 22-foot boshet and 11 feet 6 inches hearth. Blowing engines are of horizontal compound and horizontal vertical compound types, capable of blowing a pressure of 25 pounds of air. Four furnaces provided with fire-brick regenerator stoves 100 feet high and 18 feet in diameter. Large furnace has six stoves 100 feet high by 22 feet in diameter. Boilers fired with waste got from furnace.
15,000-Ton Hydraulic Forging Press
In all respects this press is the largest and most powerful forging press in the world. Water is supplied to the two plungers under a pressure of 7,000 pounds per square inch, giving it a maximum capacity of 15,000 tons. The columns supporting the cross-head are 14 feet 6 inches apart, and the working height under cross-head is 17 feet 11⁄4 inches.
Courtesy of the Bethlehem Steel Co.
Drop Forge die Shop. (See Page 419.)
This shop has a floor space of 20,400 square feet. With full equipment of most modern die sinking tools.
View of a Section of Projectile Forge Shop. (See Page 419.)
This shop has a floor space of 22,000 square feet and is thoroughly equipped with the necessary hammers, presses, furnaces, etc., for the forging, punching, closing in, treating and tempering of all sizes of armor-piercing and explosive projectiles and shells.
Forging Hollow Heavy Shaft. (See Page 420.)
No. 22. The block has a hole bored through its center, and in this the mandrel is inserted, the tube being forged around it. The hydraulic pressure for this 5,000-ton press is furnished by Whitworth pumping engines. This department contains also a 2,500-ton press of similar design.
Oil-Tempering Heavy Shaft. (See Page 420.)
Showing a shaft weighing about 33,000 pounds being taken from the vertical heating furnace and suspended over the oil-tank preparatory to being lowered for tempering. The heating furnace and oil tank are served by a sixty-ton traveling crane and forty-ton jib crane. The shrinking pit for assembling is situated between the heating furnace and oil tank.
Armor Plate Machine Shop. (See Page 423.)
The varied and complex machining required on armor plate demands tools of enormous size and strength as well as varied capacity. The equipment of this shop consists of large saws, planers, etc., together with numerous portable drill presses, grinders, etc. In this shop the different groups of armor are assembled in the positions they will occupy on the vessel and are finally inspected before shipment.
Forging Armor. (See Page 423.)
After heating, the ingot is placed under a 14,000-ton hydraulic forging press and forged to the required dimensions. The press is served by two 200-ton cranes with hydraulic lift and pneumatic travel. Weight of the porter-bar and chuck which hold the plate for forging is 125,000 pounds, exclusive of counterweights used.
Special Car Built for the Shipping of Large and Heavy Material. (See Page 424.)
Length of car over couplers, 103 feet 101⁄2 inches; capacity, 300,000 pounds. Weight of car, 196,420 pounds. Shown here loaded with casting of large 5,000-ton flanging press. Weight of casting, 252,000 pounds.
The Largest Steel Casting in the World. (See Page 424.)
Combining the product of five 40-ton open-hearth furnaces. Steel casting forming part of a 12,000-ton armor-plate hydraulic forging press. Weight of casting, 325,000 pounds (145 gross tons).
Bending Armor Plate
After being rough-forged to size and re-heated, the plate is sent to the bending press to be straightened or bent to shape. The one shown is a nickel steel side armor plate, 14 inches thick. The press exerts a hydraulic thrust of 7,000 tons, with two independently operated plungers, and is served by direct-fired furnaces with movable car bottoms and two seventy-five ton hydraulic cranes.
Courtesy of the Bethlehem Steel Co.
Battleship Turret. (See Page 425.)
Twelve-inch turret carrying two forty-five caliber twelve-inch guns for the U. S. Navy. These guns can be loaded at any angle of elevation or azimuth or while in motion. The turret is equipped with a broken or double hoist. The lower hoist supplying ammunition from the magazine to an upper handling room immediately below, and revolving with, the turret pan. This makes the upper or gun hoist shorter and increases the speed of ammunition service, besides interposing two fireproof bulkheads between the guns and the magazine handling room.
Nickel Steel Field Ring Forged Without Weld for a 5,000-Horse-power Dynamo. (See Page 425.)
Forged dimensions: outside diameter, 141 inches; inside diameter, 131 inches; width, 51 inches. Rough machined dimensions: outside diameter, 1393⁄8 inches; inside diameter, 130 inches; width, 503⁄4 inches; weight, 28,840 pounds. Average physical properties shown in United States Standard test bar taken from full-sized prolongation of end of forging: Elastic limit, 53,560 pounds per square inch. Elongation, 27.05 per cent.
Turret for Two Twelve-inch Guns for United States Battleship “Alabama.” (See Page 426.)
Balanced type. Thickness of inclined plate, 14 inches; of side plates, 10 inches. Height of side plates, 7 feet. Largest diameter of turret, 393 inches. Weight of turret, 192.41 tons.
Conning Tower and Entrance Shield for United States Battleship “Massachusetts.” (See Page 426.)
Conning tower, one piece hollow forging, nickel steel, oil tempered. Thickness of walls, 10 inches. Inside diameter, 83 inches. Height, 821⁄2 inches. Top plate, nickel steel, oil-tempered, 11⁄2 inches thick. Shield, face-hardened nickel steel, 10 inches thick, 66 inches high.
Reproduced by permission of the Philadelphia Museums.
Pouring Steel into Molds
The great ladle in the upper portion of this picture is filled with steel at the furnace. A traveling crane then takes it to the train of flat cars on which the molds stand and the steel is poured. After cooling, the molds are removed and the steel in the form of a “billet” is taken to the next process in manufacture.
Making Armor Plate
View of the armor plate machine shop at the Bethlehem Steel Company. The varied and complex machining required on armor plate demands tools of enormous size and strength as well as varied purpose. In this shop the different groups of armor are assembled in the position they will occupy on the vessel for which they are intended, and inspected before shipment.
We have always said “a white elephant” when we have meant something we didn’t know what to do with, since the King of Siam first sent a white elephant to a courtier whose fortune he wished to destroy.