Induction Heating
Molten Metal Eats Through and Explodes
The roots of today's Crucible Steel go back to 1776, when Naylor and Sanderson steel mill was established in Sheffield, England. One hundred years later, the firm established the Sanderson Brothers & Co. plant in Syracuse, New York. By 1900, Sanderson Brothers was one of 13 steel manufacturers in the newly formed Crucible Steel Company of America. In 1911, the Halcomb Steel Company of Syracuse a producer of tool steels, stainless, and alloy steels joined the Crucible family.
Crucible was a technological innovator throughout its history. In 1883, Crucible was the first steel mill in North America to use gas-fired melting furnaces for tool steel production. In 1906, Crucible became the first mill in the Western hemisphere to install an electric arc furnace.
After Special Metals proved that vacuum melting would improve the quality of superalloys for jet engines. In1955 Crucible purchased a 2000 pound furnace from TOCCO and FJ Stokes just before Stokes found that the coax design to bring the power into the vacuum was not working at Special Metals. Crucible was the first company to commercially produce vacuum arc remelted steels in 1955.
Crucible created another first when it introduced free-machining stainless steels, and in 1970, it became the first company to develop P/M high-speed tool steels, produced by the CPM (Crucible Particle Metallurgy) process.
In the spring of 1975 I joined a major sales effort with Crucible to sell this technology to the Soviet Union.