Let me tell you about Frank.
Frank used to work at a steel mill, many moons ago. He still has the clip-on visors, the ones you clip on to your hard hat so you can flip them in front of your eyes when looking into fire or when welding. Frank has the fancy looking ones.
It was a good job, a dirty job. The place was dark, fire everywhere, tons of shirtless, handsome, young man. It was the kind of place where a 4inch square piece of hot steel, 6 feet long, could come at you at 100 miles an hour and kill you before you could ask Leftie about last night’s lottery numbers. Not many other processes are as spectacular as a two story furnace melting and pouring metal. It’s a place where humans show a form of mastery over the natural world in a dramatic display, not often seen otherwise.
Electric Arc Furnace
Frank worked at a steel mill that used an electric arc furnace. Switching from blast furnaces to EAFs has environmental and economic benefits, as well as benefits for the quality of output. The use of EAFs allows steel to be made from a 100% scrap metal feedstock. Arc furnaces used in research laboratories and by dentists may have a capacity of only a few dozen grams. Industrial electric arc furnace can be as big as handling 400 tons of metal and produce temperatures in the 1,800 °C (3,272 °F) range, while laboratory units can exceed 3,000 °C (5,432 °F). Arc furnaces differ from induction furnaces in that the charge material is directly exposed to an electric arc and the current in the furnace terminals passes through the charged material.
They would tell you that the one person they themselves are afraid of is Frank.
Electric Arc Furnaces have been in use for a long time (since 1889) and allow steel to be made from a 100% scrap metal feedstock. This greatly reduces the energy required to make steel compared with primary steel making from ores. Electricity (and lots of it) is the main power source. These days the investment in a steel mill with an arc furnace goes primarily to enclosures to reduce high sound levels, dust collector for furnace off-gas and the various mitigations required to counter slag production, cooling water demand, heavy truck traffic for materials handling and environmental effects of electricity generation.
Running an EAF is expensive. Electrode wear, refractory damage, and power waste can quickly eat into profits especially if maintenance isn’t performed regularly. Shift supervisors play a prominent role in this maintenance, and thus cost containment.
A typical steel making arc furnace is often used in what you could refer to as a mini-mill plant, the kind that produces steel bars or strip product. Mini in this context is somewhat euphemistic. Its designation as mini is only appropriate in comparison to a full blown integrated mill (likely including a blast furnace). Such mini-mills can be sited relatively close to the markets for steel products, and the transport requirements are less than for an integrated mill.
And this mini mill was the kind of place Frank worked at as night shift supervisor.
Interesting people
As you can imagine, a place like that is full of interesting people. Intimidating, weathered, underpaid, tired, most days having been out drinking too long the night before. And all of them, strong as an ox. I imagine part of the recruitment process is the one where they ask you to put on a convincing ‘who are you looking at’ face. Wonderful people, no doubt, once you get to know them.
For outsiders the intimidation comes from the work force in general. Pick a guy, any guy (it’s a male dominated place), and you’d be scared.
However once you got to know them, they would tell you that the one person they themselves are afraid of is Frank.
You wouldn’t know this when getting to know Frank. He wasn’t the biggest or strongest, I’d say Frank is topping off at 5ft 8. Heck, you could even sit next to him during a lunch break to eat a sandwich and leave without a scratch.
You would however likely notice his apple. Frank always carried an apple, together with his hard hat, clip board and visors.
Not to be touched or even looked at lovingly:
Apple man ate them all.