I work at a steel mill, the pot carrier for slag is pretty cool cause you have to speed out of the mill to go pour the ladle before it cools off. very hot work even with ac in the carrier!
@@Mystic73424 The ladle would be scrapped but pot hauler is unaffected. You’d ideally try to “beach” it by dumping it in a pit (which is later crushed up by a crane dropping a massive ball on it then scrapped or reprocessed)
@@Mystic73424 If it doesnt get dumped in time it will harden and u have to either lance the slug out in pieces or in some cases the pot can be a total loss. we have welders than can fill 4 inch wide cracks that are 6-8 inches thick on pots. The ladles inside the steel mill are around 1 million dollars a piece so the slag pots are probably half the cost not as big etc..
@@haidandurham8630 That depends. Most people hire in as a entry level laborer. At that rate, working straight 40hr weeks, you'll be sitting between $60-70k. If you're willing to have no life, no sleep, and work 112hrs a week, you can break $200k. Keep in mind that this doesn't include insurance, benefits(dental vision, etc,) pension, aannnd the likelihood that you'll die 5-10 years earlier than most people.
@@licktin1091 Watched a kid get hired in at 18. He doubled 7 days a week for the entire year then quit. He had enough cash for a new car and most of his college.
I used to do tire work on those pit loaders every week almost. They're a beast of a machine and get put through a lot. Thanks for the video. I'm going to show it to people when they ask about my OTR service days
This is literally the cool stuff everyone likes to see when they're age 5......but in reality they still want to see it at 55 or 75. This channel should be alot bigger. Kinda like Mike Rowe in Dirty Jobs show, except all it's equipment instead of the job itself. Don't be afraid to show some more enthusiasm and passion for the cool equipment, people need that to understand exactly how cool and specialized this stuff really is.
@@kishascape No, they most certainly are not, making armour-grade steel plates in thicknesses required for battleships is essentially a lost art and it would take a lot of time and effort to regain it. Thickness is by far the smallest problem when it comes to naval armour plate, techniques used to create the perfect amount of hard and ductile material are no longer in use when it comes to plates often more than a foot thick.
@@Tass-h7t while it's true that is is no need for battleship-thickess armour plating and therefore no such production capability exists right now, I wouldn't call it a "lost art". Our understanding of metallurgy has improved a lot. While it would certainly be more expensive today due to rising labour and steel costs, I'm sure we could produce even more of it if we had a need as urgent as it was in WW2.
Back when we had the big brown out our local steel mill (Nanticoke works) lost a pot in mid poor They managed to lance out the chunk and save the pot We came in with a Demag A/C 700 to load it out came in around 230ton pretty impressive/expensive lift for a blob of scrap
I love seeing machines like anyone else but I like seeing how everything is done. Would have loved to see them change that tire: taking the chains off, wrapping it in extra rubber, putting the chains back on..
Simply amazing display of human ingenuity. Everything shown here was produced entirely, first, in the minds, then by the hands, of mere men. Truly astonishing creatures we are, thank you so much for the upload and for the work you do.
It's interesting to see how different everything is done in other parts of the world. Here in the Netherlands we do almost everything with trains and cranes. Slabs and slagpots are loaded onto trains with cranes, and the slagpots get tipped by a crane as well.
Man I worked at Nucor Steel Mill for Memphis Mill Service for a year. I operated the Kress Pot Carrier, 988, Haul Trucks, Lattice Boom Crawler Crane, Backhoes and Crusher Plant....all for a whopping $15 bucks an hr....what a fun job for slave wages. Contractor pay...I even went to Heavy Equipment College of Georgia and they still couldn't give me $18 an hour...
Never been to a steel mill, but I have worked on a stretch of railroad where special hot cars frequently rode by. It's a normal freight train locomotive pulling a handful of football-shaped train cars designed to be tipped once they reach their destination. You can see out the top where the lid is is typically glowing with molten steel inside. If you're close enough you can actually feel the heat radiating off the cars.
This is very very impressive. I used to work at a steel processing center, we got the material from places like this. Now I rebuild hydraulic cylinders. It's pretty cool to see these machines in action, and to see the process of what it takes to get it all done.
I used to build cooling towers at steel plants all up and down the east coast. Nucor mainly. The heat produced from the furnace was so hot it would raise the outside temperature a couple of degrees while they were pouring and we were over 1000 yards away from the smelter. The slag pot carriers were absolutely massive machines too and very impressive to watch them work.
NUCOR just doubled the size of their GHENT KY mill. It's HUGE. Their building another mill southwest of Louisville in Breckenridge county KY. I haul into North American Stainless in Ghent KY. A small river town half way between Cincinnati and Louisville.
I’m a union electrician and helped build a steel mill for Nucor in FL in 2020. They make rebar there now. It was very interesting to see the production process. They take this big piece of stock, maybe 1’x1’x10’, and they heat it up until it’s bright glowing hot. Then they send it down a conveyer and into “rollers” And each roller squeezes the hot piece of stock down into a smaller and smaller but longer piece. As the stock gets squeezed, it picks up speed. I remember one day they were testing the machines and everyone was told to stand far back away from the rollers. Well, as the steel picked up speed, it missed the opening on one of the rollers, hit the side of the roller machine, and the bright hot steel “string” went flying up into the air, looked like silly string. After they shut everything down, they had to wait for the steel to cool off so they could cut out the wadded-up steel from inside one of the rollers. Looked like a big, weird ball of yarn stuck inside the machine. I left that job before they test fired the arc furnace though. Would have loved to see that in person!
Sweet, I'm also in the ibew as an apprentice and working at another Nucor plant in Kentucky. It's absolutely fascinating seeing the arc furnace running, the noise that it makes is kinda horrific and awesome because of how much amps you know are firing through that. We have to do cleanings every now and then when they do shutdowns to clean the rectifier room. It's incredible, they have the big dc smoothing reactor in the middle, which is water-cooled, and it's roughly 40'x40'x20' maybe. It's just really cool to see electricity on such a big scale, really blows your mind to see the capabilities. I was also working underneath it when it kicked on and the magnetic field it produces is like nothing I've experienced before, I could get all my tools to stand straight up and balance on the top of a 10 footer and holding them out with your hand and feeling that magnetic pull is crazy. People don't like to work there because of the conditions but I think it's fascinating. Always keeping safe though.
It’s amazing to see what steel workers do, I’ve been a heavy equipment mechanic for years. Granted the closest thing I’ve come to working on is construction scrapers, graders, loaders, etc. I can’t imagine what it’s like working with these guys. Y’all steel workers, operators and supporting crew (got you gear heads) are awesome, and not to mention everyone in the comment section is just sharing information without all the typical bicker. I admire y’all
I am a contractor a commercial diver to be exact and I spend a lot of time in different steel mills it’s always blows my mind when I’m in US Steel Gary Works and I’m watching these front end loaders drive into the slag pits and they are being sprayed with hoses and they go in and out. They we CAKED in slag. The slab haulers are extremely interesting and crazy to watch coming around corners on the crazy mill roads. It’s going to be interesting the next 10-20 years because every time we are in a new spot diving in the mill that we haven’t before we are seeing more and more of missing blue prints and knowledge of where we are working because all the old guys who knew everything are either fired, retired or dead early from the hard work lifestyle as they are taking the knowledge and mental blueprints with them
The amount of different kinds of specialized vehicles in a steel mill is impressive makes me wonder who designs and manufactures these it’s definitely not caterpillar because everything isn’t yellow
Ya dude, you get around love what your doing I whould pay good cash to walk in your shoes for a week as a holiday , Don't get me wrong I can't even imagine the hoops, challenges,and bull you gotta go through to do this stuff so we can get a glimpse keep it up love your work dude
I work at a Worthington processing plant in Michigan, I work on a 60” slitter which is permitted for 25 gauge to 300 gauge steel, we are just starting to test run aluminum at our tension leveler and 72 inch slitter. I have never been so fascinated with the whole steel process or let alone just my job, I love working with steel and I stumbled on a job I didn’t know was my dream job, the mill portion is just a fraction of what the process is.
Hey !! I work here haha yes them 988 are some piece of art and them steel slabs as soon they make them they put them Outside and if you drive by them let’s say 10-20 feet it’s some extreme heat
AK Steel in Middletown Ohio , worked there as a union boilermaker , cool place dangerous as hell over at the blast furnace. I see that this video was taken before they blew the old stack down.
Remember, not everyone can drive one of those things! You'll need a class C license, no accidents for 6 weeks, you have to take a 2-hour training course, and find a special way to make the boss happy.
I work in the iron ore mines in Northern Minnesota. Our 988K loaders we use to crush the taconite uses half slick tires to help reduce the amount of rocks that get stuck between the tread & carrying it elsewhere around the mine. You should try to get up to here sometime to do a video on the source of the steel.
something to keep in mind about the slagpot carriers, you got the weight of the slagpot and then the contents all in the back. the fact that the carrier doesnt tip ass over backwards is amazing. unlike cranes, they dont put down extra 'feet' because most times the soil isnt compact enough, so there is a whack of extra weight upfront
I work at Cleveland cliffs burns harbor Indiana. I work in the BOF steel production we spray the furnaces from burning through. Been there for 5 years and everyday you see something different. Nothing is ever the same!
Grew up in Homestead PA. Thought I would end up in the mill. They were starting to close when I graduated in 1980, joined the Navy, then after that spent 37 years with the Corps of Engineers. Had a few little stints working with refractory work when we got laid off in the winter. Great career I had.
This is cool we normally get either the B&P BTNC or PW1 train which hauls them steel slabs in special carrier cars from the AK steel plant in Butler Pa to New Castle for CSX
I can't believe the amount of great material that was right in front of you to film like changing the tire and you just completely glossed over it like nothing. This place had so much potential for a long video. I feel like I was robbed of information that you could have provided. Shirley I'm not the only one that feel this way.
You're right, but you can't just freely run around a steel mill with cameras and were we supposed to stand there for the whole day as they changed the tire? Also... please don't call me Shirley
I worked in an Aluminum cast house for 3 years, it would have been nice if they had given us these for anything we had especially for the fork trucks we used to dump dross pots after cleaning the melter. With always going into the cast scrap house and people not being careful when running them out to the dumping area our tires were always worn to hell
The truck drivers in the army used to complain about having to put chains on wheels during the winter. At least they didn't need a blowtorch to put them on or take them off.
To me one of the coolest pieces of equipment that pot carrier of the hot molten steel that is so neat to see and I like the big 988 loader and the big modified excavator magnets
I've only had a couple of visiting jobs on a steel works, so I've not seen everything but the slab carriers are my favourites. It looks so unlike anything I see in the wider construction industry.
Use to work a at steel frame manufacturing company. Where we would recieve the steel coils made from those huge slabs (did not know coils started out like that. Always wondered that). The company would then literally unwind that big ass coils and would ultimately make different sized frames (forge the pieces and assemble them). I worked logistics, so I only dealt with the end products but walking to and from the bathrooms/lunchrooms, you can see the evolution of that giant coil
Work as a heavy equipment operator in the " slag" in Northwest Indiana. Very cool what you do.. it has been a great living for me and my family. My son now is in the business.. I wish we still had the old 992C and D models to dig the pits. Companies down sized to 88's.. go through many more tires.chains and especially buckets. Supposedly to save fuel. They eat 5 times more money in buckets bucket repairs and tires because the smaller machine has to so many more cycles to get the job done.. oh well their money . I dont dig pits anymore or work with any Hot stuff. Now Magnet Crane Operator. Much better for old timers.. anyway always enjoy your videsos.. awsome stuff.. stay safe!
Where I work we service a lot of metal recycling facilities in our city, pretty much all of them. One of them is a larger corporation that owns a couple Kawasaki 95Z7 hot slag machines. We have rebuilt one of them from the hydraulic pumps out(as in, just the hydraulic system mostly), and are in the process of rebuilding their other one. These machines get into the nasty and when run to shit, are hung up nasty as well. Gnarly to work on, but they get their work done. It's interesting seeing one of these with 16 thousand hours in pieces in the workshop, taken to its bones.
I thought those slag haulers were extinct, over 40 yr at Republic steel they replaced them with a device that would make like popcorn out of the slag coming straight out of the furnace by spraying water on the slag. When I 1st started working in 1973 on the steel mill RR we would haul a train of about 10 slag buckets from the furnace to be dumped a mile away. One of those pots accidentally dump on a coworker and burnt him up. We all stayed far away from them.
2:09 Here in Brazil, it is prohibited to remove these chains with a torch when the tires are inflated. There is a risk of explosion, there have been numerous fatalities with this type of activity.
I'm more here for the tires than anything. I work for toyo and looking at the tires like this its mind boggling to me the thought of making such big tires