The Works Of Messrs. Schneider And Co.

THE SIEMENS-MARTIN STEEL DEPARTMENT : running on overhead tracks, serves for handling all the heavy loads. It is supplemented by a 10-ton portable quick-acting steam crâne for lifting the lighter loads. This latter crane travels on all the lines that surround the pit. In the year 1894, Messrs. Schneider and Co., finding that their latest 25-ton furnace gave excellent results for casting small ingots bymeans of ladies, décidée! to do away with the disadvantages that attended direct casting into the small ingot moulds. This change involved the putting down of a new and costly plant, and meant a work of con- sidérable difficulty ; the change had to be accomplished CASTING PITS AND FURNACES. 35 The increase in the size of the new furnaces makes it possible to obtain more homogeneity in the steel of heavy ingots, as these can be cast, according to their size, eithei from one furnace or from two, with the help of a collecting lad le. The new furnaces are raised on a platform 4 metres (13 ft.) above the level of the works. Each is provided with a special casting pit, perpenclicular to the wall of the furnace, and adapted for casting ingots that weigh from 2 cwt. to 8 tons. The platform is in communication with the ground level, by means of a track, the maximum incline of which is 1 in 40. The raw material is brought up to Fig. 83. Main Casting Pit (also showing 150-ton Electric Crane). without suspending, or in any way checking, the daily steel production. These difficulties were, however, successfully surmounted. A certain number of the old furnaces were kept in work at high pressure, and the alterations were carried out without any diminution of the output. Ihe actual arrangement is indicated in the plan 1 ig. 77, Plate XVIII. The transformation took less than ten months to complété, and the new plant, when entirely finished, will consist of four furnaces, three of which are of 35 tons capacity, wliile the fourth will have a capacity of 45 tons, and will be constructed in the place now occupiecl by tlie 25-ton furnace which is still the furnace doors in small trucks, hauled up the incline by a light locomotive. Charging Furnaces.—A special system is followed which insures a rapid charging of the furnaces. Notwith- standing tlie diversity of weights and sliapes of material and scrap of which the charge consists, a 35-ton furnace is easily chargée! in less tlian one hour. For this work a 20-ton overhead electric travelling crane is used, there being one of these for each furnace, and to this is suspended a special C-shaped carrier, patented by Messrs. Schneider and Co. On the lower brandi of this carrier is placed the material ; this brauch is free to move in its bearings on the