175 Ton Steel Teeming Ladle

Rick Rowlands · Jun 23, 2010

What is a teeming ladle you may ask! A teeming ladle holds molten steel and has a bottom pour mechanism to fill ingot molds with molten steel. The Youngstown Steel Heritage Foundation has been given a 175 ton capacity teeming ladle, and today I started preparing it for its shipment to the Tod Engine Heritage Park in Youngstown. We are actually only saving half of the ladle. The half we are keeping will eventually be mounted to the front (west) wall of our building as part of a life size exhibit on the ingot teeming process. The part we are keeping has to be cut into three sections for shipment.

Here are a few photos of my latest "steel salvage adventure":

The ladle is laying on its side. This is the side we are keeping. The large arm is part of the stopper rig.

Steel mill stuff is huge! The ladle hulks over my truck.

I marked in orange where I plan to make my cut. The big diagonal arm is used for lip pouring the ladle.

An identical ladle at the Duquesne Works before demolition.

Rick Rowlands · Jun 23, 2010

The ingot teeming process at J&L Steel. We have also been promised a ladle hook from Morgan Engineering and tomorrow I will go take a look at it.

Dave A · Jun 23, 2010

Great stuff Rick, thanks for posting.

I have always wondered how they kept the molten steel from sticking to the inside of the ladles, or from melting the moving parts. Or, did they just use them until they were too gummed up and melt them down?

bryan_machine · Jun 24, 2010

Is a 175tons a gross weight or a net weight?

If a net weight, how much does the ladel itself weigh?

Such a ladel would be lined with some kind of high insulator? ("refractory" material?)

Rick Rowlands · Jun 24, 2010

With a new refractory brick lining, this ladle would hold 175 tons of steel. The ladle itself probably weighs 60,000 lbs. It does not have a lining now, making our job MUCH easier.

Rick Rowlands · Jul 4, 2010

Last week we got half of the ladle cut away, and this is how it looks currently. This upcoming week I hope to finish the job and cut this section into four large pieces for transport to the Tod Engine Heritage Park. Once it has been taken to Youngstown I will then weld the four sections back together (over an extended period of time I am sure) and prepare the ladle for display.

To silence the people who would question cutting the ladle into smaller pieces, I will explain. By cutting the ladle into pieces I can transport it for $350 on a backhaul. If I wanted to move it in one piece it would be an oversize load and would require escorts, so add at least one zero to that price in that case. I can do a LOT of welding for three grand!

A teeming ladle doesn't look right without the special oversized hooks used to pick them up. So I asked my contact at Morgan Engineering about donating one, and was invited to pick one out of their pile of scrap ladle hooks. Here is the one that I picked. It was the largest one in the pile!

This hook is 7" thick, 16 feet long and weighs 11,000 lbs. It is to be mounted to the front of the teeming ladle, most likely with large diameter bolts passing through the hook and ladle.

The hook and ladle will be mounted to the front of the building via a set of supports that I am still designing. Yes I know it will have to be massive to support the weight.

G-Auto · Jul 4, 2010

Is the hook made out of soilid or built up out of plate?

Rick Rowlands · Jul 4, 2010

These hooks are built up out of 1" plate and riveted together. Usually these hooks can be rebuilt by replacing damaged individual plates, but this particular hook is bent and was scrapped out. The hook is not very old, it was made in 1998 for the AK Steel Middletown, OH Works.

Here is a new hook being drilled for rivets at the Morgan plant.

JL Sargent · Jul 5, 2010

Rick, where did the capacity and weight numbers come from? They just seem way too high IMHO. For instance, I would think that ladle has less than a 90 ton capacity? IIRC USS Fairfield has a 310 Ton crane lifting 90 ton capacity casting ladles. A modern "submarine" ladle car has a capacity of 150tons and is double that ladle size I suspect. Probably not critical info but might be food for thought.

johnoder · Jul 5, 2010

A ton of steel (at .2833 lbs per cubic inch) requires a little over 4 cubic feet. This is cold of course - at 2900 F I expect it will take up a little more room. So a 175 ton ladle would need to be over 715 cubic feet inside what ever lining was used. Or say a 96" deep pool of steel 128" dia.- about a million and a quarter cubic inches.

John Oder

David Utidjian · Jul 5, 2010

John,

From your figures and rough scaling in the last pic in the first post then I would guesstimate that it is indeed about 175 ton capacity ladle.

-DU-

JL Sargent · Jul 5, 2010

Looking at pictures on the net pretty tricky too. Looking at the first B&W picture the ladle looks much larger than the first picture of it.

Rick Rowlands · Jul 5, 2010

The HAER report states that the Duquesne ladles were 175 ton capacity. I have a drawing for a 167 ton ladle which has roughly the same dimensions. Its light weight including stopper rig is 60,000 lbs.

gmatov · Jul 6, 2010

Submarine car capacity is irrelevant. They haul iron to the BOP vessel to be made and alloyed into the steel of the batch.

Our ladles at ET are 250 ton, hoisted by 350 ton cranes. Ladle, load and lifting tackle probably go close to 325 ton. Block and hook are considered part of the load.

I AM going to have to come see what you are doing one of these days.

Any thing you could use, like some largish wrenches, torque multiplier, welding wire? I have some stuff I don't need, and too lazy to try selling it, as soon donate it before I drop dead and the kids dumpster it.

Cheers,

George

Rick Rowlands · Jul 6, 2010

George,

I sent you a PM.

Nominal · Jul 8, 2010

Rick Rowlands said:
These hooks are built up out of 1" plate and riveted together. Usually these hooks can be rebuilt by replacing damaged individual plates, but this particular hook is bent and was scrapped out. The hook is not very old, it was made in 1998 for the AK Steel Middletown, OH Works.

I have to wonder how it got bent - running the load into a wall or something?

Rick Rowlands · Jul 10, 2010

I have just learned that this ladle was built in 1963 in Youngstown by the William B. Pollock Company, making it an even more impressive piece to add to our collection.

I am hoping to get it moved by the end of next week if all goes well.

JoeE. · Jul 10, 2010

Deleted post because I went back and found the answer to the question I was asking.......

175 Ton Steel Teeming Ladle

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Hot Rolled

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