Steel Making by Basic Electric Process

The manufacture of steel is an extremely old Industry; so old that it is difficult to trace when this important metal was first discovered. Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. Iron when alloyed with other metals like Nickel, Chrome, Molybdenum, Tungsten are called Nickel Steel. Chrome Steel, Molybdenum Steel Tungsten Steel, etc., which are known as Special Steels. The subject steel is so vast that this word in a general term has never been used to denote a definite term. Its manufacture is equally full of complexities. Tracing the history of its manufacture of the past 5 centuries we find it was first manufactured by cementation process in Belgium in 1600 A.D. and then in the crucible by an English Clock Maker, Benjamin Huntsman by name, sometime in 1742. Then Henry Bessemer in 1856 came out with his wonderful invention of blowing air through molten pig iron burning out its impurities like Carbon, Silicon, Manganese, Sulphur, Phosphorus etc. producing masses of steel in a few minutes' time. This was followed a few years later by the discovery of open hearth process by Siemens and Martin. About 1900 A.D. Heroult in France and Kjellin in Sweden designed and built Electric Furnaces of Arc type for Steel Making. In 1927 the first high frequency Electric Crucible Furnace (Coreless Induction Type) was installed for the first time in the world to be commercially used for the manufacture of Tool Steels at the Works of Messrs. Edgar Allen & Co., Ltd., in Sheffield.