 |
| Tawn Orock posted Warming things up on this 15 degree morning here in western pa. [The billets are 10 5/8" by 400" (33.3') long. According to several comments, those are big billets. They will be used to make seamless pipes.] Brad Parker: Blooms. Technically anything 6” or larger, regardless of shape, is considered a bloom. Steven M. Hnatiak: In the late 70's I worked at USS Steel Tubular Mill in Lorain, Ohio for 5 years. The Mill employed 8600 employees during this time. I worked at the East end of the mill (3 Seamless Hot end which made the biggest diameter,thickest wall, longest seamless tube). On the West end we had 2 blast furnaces and 1 BOP shop that made the molten steel which was poured into molds that where on narrow gauge railroad cars. The billets where placed into railroad cars and where transported to the East end of the mill to the 3 seamless mill. Overhead cranes with electric magnets would unload the billets onto racks that fed a circular rotary furnace. These billets were heated to 3000 degrees F. and taken out and placed on roller racks and fed inro a rolling mill (2 large rollers). This billet was forced into this mill and a tungsten plug with a water cooled pipe was locked into position. This created the beginning of the seamless tube(approx. 8 inch diameter X 60 inches long). (note: this mill was called the First Piercer). If the billet became to cold or the piercer water cooled pipe was not locked into place this pipe could bend like a pretzel and come out of its guide and come back to the steel shed that the operator was located.( There was a large RED EMERGENCY BUTTON that would stop the rolling mill). Will be continued....... |
 |
| Tenaris-2021-Jun "Steel production is now underway at Tenaris’s first melt shop in the United States that will soon supply steel bars for its seamless pipe mills in the States and Canada. The steel shop in Koppel, PA, part of the company’s strategic acquisition of IPSCO, completed in 2020, has started producing steel bars following a year-long investment of more than $15M USD in upgrades to integrate the facility into Tenaris’ global network of steel mills....The investments included expansion of the mill’s capabilities to produce a wider range of steel bars. This work entailed new design and install of molds for the caster, where the liquid steel is solidified, and other structural reinforcements. Betterments also included an overhaul of the existing cranes in the mill as well as the addition of new cranes to transfer scrap metal to the furnaces, the integration of a new production management system and additional automation upgrades." |
This plant will feed bars to their Ambridge, PA, and Bay City, TX, mills that produce seamless pipes. [Tenaris-2021-Sep]
 |
| David Holoweiko posted Babcock and Wilcox Koppel PA Works Beaver County PA 1960 |
 |
| Tenaris-2022-Feb and EllwoodCity "Tenaris is gearing up to reactivate its heat treatment and finishing lines at its Koppel, Pennsylvania, plant to streamline the flow of seamless product at its facilities in the northeast." The pipes are threaded and finished in Brookfield, OH. |
 |
| David Holoweiko posted Ladle refining station Babcock and Wilcox Koppel PA plant. Was built by Midland Ross. Photo courtesy Wayne Cole |
 |
| Jerry W. Jordak posted The Tenaris mill in Koppel, PA in December 2023. |
The Plant's Predecessor: Koppel Car Company
 |
| David Holoweiko posted Koppel Car Company Koppel PA Arthur Koppel began in the light railway business at Berlin, Germany, in partnership with Benno Orenstein 1 April 1876, doing general manufacturing as Orenstein & Koppel. About 1885 the partners somehow divided the company—whether physically, or simply into two divisions we don’t know—with the Orenstein & Koppel firm continuing with the German market, while the Arthur Koppel Company concentrated on development of overseas business. Although the Arthur Koppel Company built and supplied track and rolling stock, it did not build locomotives, but subcontracted them through other manufacturers including, of course, Orenstein & Koppel. In 1905 or 1906, the Arthur Koppel Company purchased 558 acres of land above the Beaver River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and began constructing a plant and a company town. The plant appears to have built primarily—if not exclusively—industrial type cars such as dump cars and service cars for steam and electric railways, largely of narrow gauge. It is known that they built some 45 ft. 4-motor electric cars for the Chicago Railways Company in 1910. The firm had several sales offices, including one in Chicago. Arthur Koppel died in 1908, shortly after the Pennsylvania plant was built, and the two companies re-integrated, doing business for some time under an awkward combination of names such as Orenstein & Koppel & Arthur Koppel Co. or Orenstein-Arthur Koppel Co. In 1917, as the United States entered the European war that would become the 1st World War, the U.S. government arrested many of the company’s German managers and confiscated the company’s assets, including the Orenstein & Koppel properties in Pennsylvania. The assets were sold to the Koppel Industrial Car & Equipment Company, a newly established, wholly-owned subsidiary of the Pressed steel Car Company After the car company closed Babcock and Wilcox bought the plant and expanded it with Electric Arc furnaces and produced steel . The plant is still in business as Tenaris Koppel Tubulars Corporation |
No comments:
Post a Comment