Thanks to Nucor Steel
There are few firework displays that are more dramatic than the explosions created from melting down scrap metal.
Last week, Nucor Steel welcomed DNDA into the world of steelmaking – their mill down the street from Youngstown Cultural Arts Center has been firing up steel for more than 100 years. As there slogan suggests, they’re “anything but run of the mill”. As you may think, a steel plant is about production, but what we discovered was that there is also an art to the efficiency that is turning raw materials into steel.
We began our tour with a brief history of the company’s legacy, as one of the oldest and most productive steel companies and one of the few companies who are environmentally conscious in the industry. Our guide explained the Seattle campus is the hub for producing rebar.
The first stop within the plant – the metal yard, where large piles of scrap metal, mainly crushed cars, are waiting to be pulled by the overhead crane and dumped into a bin. The bin is then transported to the next stage in the process – the melt shop.
We perched in the glass booth with the operator who controlled the melting process. Sparks and explosions stole the show as raw materials were changed into molten steel. We hoped to catch the next blaze from another batch, but as habitually efficient as the Nucor staff, we were guided to the next stage – where molten metal is formed and finished.
The final stops showed us the last stage – cooling the red hot solid steel into coiled rebar and packed for shipping. It’s kind of mesmerizing to witness the kind of production that goes into creating a product like steel. Even though the US steel market is not the world leader it once was, the Nucor team continues to improve and perfect their process of creating highly engineered steel.
Big thanks to our neighbors at Nucor for the enlightening tour!