ThyssenKrupp Magazin
ThyssenKrupp Magazin
ThyssenKrupp Magazin
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magazine<br />
TK<br />
Think. Think it over.<br />
Think up great new products:<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> starts with<br />
raw materials and creates<br />
finished materials in every<br />
conceivable form. You<br />
can see <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong>’s<br />
fascination for materials and<br />
feel it with your own two<br />
hands. Worldwide.
Our ideas advance materials<br />
By Prof. Dr. Ekkehard D. Schulz,<br />
Chairman of the Executive Board of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> AG<br />
At all times, people have debated the exact tasks of scientists. Do<br />
they search only for the truth, or do they want to change the<br />
world? Will they bring blessings to mankind, or become<br />
Prometheus Unleashed, who became a threat through his violent abuse<br />
of science?<br />
As a leading technology group, <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> must deal closely<br />
with the natural sciences. We do not claim to want to change the world,<br />
but we do want to fulfill the expectations of our stakeholders. Our path<br />
leads toward the future, with the help of all the creative potential that<br />
our employees can put to good use.<br />
This latest issue of the <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> <strong>Magazin</strong>e presents practical<br />
examples of innovative thinking. Working with basic materials has<br />
always been and still is one of our company’s core competencies, starting<br />
with the founders of Krupp, Thyssen and Hoesch. Thanks in part to<br />
their inventions and entrepreneurial activities, the world changed.<br />
In fact, the rate of change has accelerated substantially, and discerning<br />
thinkers of our time have drawn their own conclusions from this.<br />
“Fast change is above all a product of science,” the philosopher and<br />
physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker said more than three decades<br />
ago. Yet despite the inherent truth of this statement, from Thyssen<br />
Krupp’s perspective we see change above all as a consequence of altered<br />
customer desires. The customer and his or her desires form the<br />
starting point for all of our considerations. Recognizing the customer’s<br />
needs and interests is our duty and the basis of our future-oriented activities.<br />
The manifold use of basic materials shows that we are on the right<br />
path. Undoubtedly, steel is still our core basic material, but it also harbors<br />
unforeseen potential. For example, our engineers in the automotive<br />
supply business have managed to build an extremely lightweight<br />
car body with the “NewSteelBody,” and our new “assembled<br />
camshafts” with their significant weight reduction represent another innovation.<br />
Or take the increasingly broad range of applications for stainless<br />
steel: here, too, our innovations are advancing the use of this basic<br />
material in household applications, food production, construction and –<br />
of course! – bobsleigh racing, one of the faster sporting disciplines. Our<br />
company even created one of the most sustainable applications ever:<br />
stainless steel containers that are used to store “Germany’s cultural<br />
heritage” – millions of microfilmed documents kept in an underground<br />
shelter in the Schauinsland region near Freiburg, where they should remain<br />
safe and sound for at least 500 years.<br />
But our efforts don’t stop at the basic material of steel. Our engineers<br />
also deal with magnesium, a fascinating basic material that is<br />
only now being researched for customer applications, and aluminum,<br />
which is perfectly suited for automotive applications. And new vacuum<br />
technology provides us with basic materials that fulfill the highest requirements<br />
in aviation and aerospace technology.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
EDITORIAL 1<br />
The customer is king – and thus exerts the greatest influence on<br />
our use of basic materials. <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Services offers the necessary<br />
platform: Within seconds, a special program for the selection of basic<br />
materials churns out recommendations on which materials best suit the<br />
customer’s requirements. And we have a lot to offer beyond the basic<br />
material: Blohm + Voss, for example, offers so-called oil tools, instruments<br />
used to move heavy parts made of specific materials, onto oil<br />
platforms. Here, the material provided the basis for the development of<br />
the suitable tool, and things are no different in naval construction: a<br />
new type of laser welding technology allows us to work on panels measuring<br />
several meters within the most exacting tolerances.<br />
Are those examples of the work of Prometheus Unleashed? Quite<br />
the contrary: <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> is committed to and upholds the principle<br />
of responsibility, which is why we actively seek contact with young materials<br />
researchers working at universities or research institutions and<br />
support their projects.<br />
The principle of responsibility is a principle of sustainability. When<br />
we supply stainless steel profiles for the visitor tower of Cologne Cathedral<br />
this year, it will combine technology and culture. Other successful<br />
examples of this combination can be found in this issue of our magazine.<br />
So please allow us to take you on this informative and entertaining<br />
journey, a journey through the world of basic materials at Thyssen<br />
Krupp.<br />
Sincerely,<br />
Prof. Dr. Ekkehard D. Schulz,<br />
Chairman of the Executive Board<br />
of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> AG
2 CONTENTS<br />
12 Sparklers bring<br />
a little light to those<br />
dark winter nights<br />
4 Susi Erdmann<br />
offers world-class<br />
performance in her<br />
race bobsleigh<br />
32 Sensitive tools<br />
for drilling pipes<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004<br />
4 A material made to race<br />
High-grade steel moves at top speed on the bobsleigh track<br />
12 Starred immersion that lights up children’s eyes<br />
Iron powder helps bring out the sparkle in sparklers<br />
20 Helping people move up the ‘sawed mountain’<br />
Sleepers for the rack railway in Montserrat<br />
30 Manufactured from components<br />
Assembled camshafts for modern engines<br />
32 Trimmed for precision<br />
Oil tools for multi-ton drilling pipes<br />
38 An up-and-down eye catcher<br />
Elevator cab design as a form of cultural expression<br />
42 Attention to detail in a gigantic concept<br />
Barbara Schock-Werner helps keep Cologne Cathedral in shape<br />
48 Ready to roll on this steel production by-product<br />
LiDonit ® , a stabilized slag, makes an excellent surface for roads<br />
54 Going into the future lightly<br />
The NewSteelBody is a triumph of the steel maker’s art<br />
58 Advertising innovation<br />
“We need people who are fascinated by production materials”<br />
An interview with Prof. Dr. Ulrich Middelmann<br />
20 New cross-ties<br />
help the railway make the<br />
long climb up to the<br />
monastery at Montserrat<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
62 A “Hall of Fame” kind of guy is remembered<br />
Edward G. Budd, the inventor of the all-steel car body<br />
68 Styled in a light costume with plenty of flair<br />
The new aluminum body of the Lamborghini Gallardo<br />
74 A slap-shot-tested surface assures puck safety<br />
The plastic ‘glass’ protects ice hockey fans in Düsseldorf’s arena<br />
76 Invented for the customer<br />
Jochen Adams’ materials selection program<br />
84 The sea is no place for tolerance<br />
Laser welding technology offers the tight fits needed in shipbuilding<br />
88 Delivering unrivaled purity<br />
Super alloys from the vacuum induction melting furnace<br />
92 Creating beauty and protecting against corrosion<br />
Stainless steel applications in everyday life<br />
94 A tricky but plentiful material geared to the future<br />
Researchers discover magnesium as a production material<br />
100 Keeping them safe for centuries<br />
Special containers protect important cultural documents<br />
110 Glossary<br />
112 Editorial directory<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
68 Aluminum features<br />
help bring lightness and style<br />
to the Lamborghini Gallardo<br />
58 “The handling of<br />
production materials fosters<br />
creativity,” says Prof. Dr.<br />
Ulrich Middelmann<br />
38 The design of<br />
elevator cabs says<br />
a lot about a country<br />
and its customs<br />
CONTENTS 3<br />
42 Master builder<br />
Barbara Schock-Werner<br />
uses stainless steel in<br />
the restoration of<br />
Cologne Cathedral
4 BOBSLEIGH RACING<br />
Susi Erdmann is the current<br />
world champion in the two-man<br />
bobsleigh. She, too, profits from<br />
the know-how of bobsleigh<br />
expert Klaus Nowak.<br />
He has developed new runners<br />
for her in the hope that she will<br />
remain difficult to beat in the<br />
world’s ice channels.<br />
It’s a queasy feeling. Because just the experience of seeing a bobsleigh race past<br />
you as fast as an arrow at a speed of 150 km/h is crazy! But then to sit in the thing<br />
yourself, with a helmet on your head that almost endearingly covers every millimeter<br />
of your head so that you don’t suffer any damage from the violent knocks, that’s<br />
no joke any more. Because what awaits you on this hair-raising run apart from the<br />
guaranteed “ultimate kick”?<br />
What a piece of luck that you are allowed to take your place in the bob and three<br />
young men push the vehicle on its way. Not just any old how, but with all their might.<br />
It’s beautiful, the first 20 meters on the bobsleigh track remind you of a sightseeing<br />
tour, you look around the landscape, at the pretty hills in tranquil Winterberg in the<br />
Sauerland region. But only for a few seconds before the bob turns into the first corner<br />
– the racing journey begins, unstoppable, getting faster and faster without the unsuspecting<br />
bob passenger having even the slightest idea of which corner he is shooting<br />
through right now with such power that it takes his breath away.<br />
“Bobbing is no child’s play.” This is said by someone with a serious voice but<br />
clearly sparkling eyes that make it obvious straight away: Klaus Nowak is wildly enthusiastic<br />
about this sport. Even in his small office, at the center of the sprawling Witten<br />
works site of Edelstahl Witten-Krefeld GmbH, part of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel, his bob-<br />
Steel makes<br />
the difference<br />
in this ice race<br />
World-class performance in the<br />
bobsleigh requires sleds made from<br />
the best materials. Fortunately,<br />
Edelstahl Witten-Krefeld GmbH’s Klaus<br />
Nowak has a reputation as one of the<br />
“high priests of the bob runners”<br />
By Heribert Klein | Photos Walter Schmitz<br />
sleighing enthusiasm is infectious. There he sits at his<br />
computer like a driving instructor explaining the theory of<br />
driving a car, and takes his guest with him on a journey<br />
under and through the bobsleigh, something which is<br />
usually out of the question for outsiders. For a bob is a<br />
high-tech product into which the designer lets nobody<br />
look except the bob pilots. With good reason, because if<br />
you look at the world elite of men and women bobsleighers,<br />
you will see the difference is not in seconds but<br />
in hundredths of seconds, expressed in distance, centimeters<br />
not meters.<br />
OBSESSED WITH BOB-TUNING TECHNOLOGY<br />
Now and then Nowak has been called the “high priest of<br />
bob runners” – to express that he is one of the top specialists<br />
who really knows about this difficult phenomenon<br />
of the runners and the bobsleigh. Although first of all, at<br />
the Witten plant he is responsible for the mechanical re-<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
BOBSLEIGH RACING 5
6 BOBSLEIGH RACING<br />
Taken to extremes by centrifugal forces<br />
Bob pilots have to<br />
steer with their fingertips.<br />
Only then will they<br />
find the ideal line and<br />
shoot into the curve with<br />
increased drive.
BOBSLEIGH RACING 7
8 BOBSLEIGH RACING
pairs including automotive engineering and hydraulics – in view of the gigantic machinery<br />
on the plant site a task with a great deal of responsibility. But the way life happens:<br />
at some stage in the early 1980’s he (and thus the company too) came into contact<br />
with the sport of bobsleighing. “I am a technology freak” he describes the basis<br />
for dedicating part of his life with the greatest of passion to the “tuning” of bobs, as<br />
he calls it. The technician, who meanwhile has 35 working years behind him at the<br />
high-grade steel plant, quickly became famous. So famous that for several years he<br />
equipped and looked after the technology of the Swiss national bob team – with Edelstahl<br />
Witten-Krefeld behind him as the sponsor of the team. For what speaks better<br />
for a company than an employee who puts his employer first and does not place himself<br />
at the center of things at all?<br />
EXTREME EXPERIENCE WITH EXTREME COLLATERAL ACCELERATION<br />
Although he would be completely justified in doing so. Susi Erdmann, for example, the<br />
reigning women’s two-man bob world champion, has just received brand new runners<br />
form Nowak. The blonde, athletic racer also keeps quiet about the exact alloys the runners<br />
have. “If you haven’t got excellent runners that perform optimally, you haven’t<br />
got a chance,” says the tall athlete, who is almost intoxicated by this combination of<br />
speed and centrifugal forces. Almost, because steering the bob requires at least as<br />
much sensitivity as does its production. “You steer with your fingertips,” says Susi<br />
To the top with top-notch materials<br />
Susi Erdmann knows<br />
every little detail of the<br />
bobsleigh track in Königssee.<br />
Here, on her home turf,<br />
she is proving once again how<br />
incredibly fast her reactions<br />
are. The new welded steel<br />
runners help her continue to<br />
improve her time.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
Susi Erdmann never gets<br />
into the driving seat of a bob<br />
without intensive mental<br />
preparations. Her talent to<br />
control her passion for fast<br />
rides helps her succeed in the<br />
global top league.<br />
BOBSLEIGH RACING 9<br />
Erdmann, “the fingertips feel most precisely whether or<br />
not the bob is ideally in line and leaves the curve with increased<br />
drive. You just have to be able to react tremendously<br />
quickly."<br />
On the bobsleigh track, mind you. For centrifugal<br />
forces in the periphery make this wild ride down into the<br />
valley an unforgettable experience. But the “braining<br />
around” in the high-grade steel plant, as Nowak calls it,<br />
that is the other side of this intoxicating sport.<br />
Nowak, a man on the far side of 50, likes working<br />
with young people. He can try out what he has thought up,<br />
changed, remade and tested himself as a technician, together<br />
with top sledders on the bobsleigh track. Preferably<br />
in the bob with them on location: it is no surprise that Stefan<br />
Drescher, 27 years old and currently, as a member of<br />
the B squad of the German bobsleighers, a particular protege<br />
of Klaus Nowak, gets the best material from him that<br />
he has at the moment. But the designer wants to feel for<br />
himself what effect his innovations have in the bob. So he<br />
climbs into Drescher’s vehicle as brakeman – four times in
10 BOBSLEIGH RACING<br />
The bobsleigh conceals high technology. Klaus Nowak seeks to use new production materials, new processes and new applications<br />
to secure a place at the top for such pilots as Susi Erdmann.<br />
Into the curve in the steel chassis<br />
a row he races down the bobsleigh track in Winterberg, afterwards expressing great<br />
satisfaction that the new material means a time lead of two tenths of a second, would<br />
you believe.<br />
The symbiosis seems strange. On the one hand, a bob lacking every driving<br />
comfort, uninsulated the bob riders crouch above the runners on the bare floor,<br />
squeezed tightly into the fuselage (made of carbon fiber) like herrings in a tin. But who<br />
is looking for traveling comfort during the experience of taking it to the limit the body<br />
gets with the most violent of sideways accelerations, beyond the everyday, really taking<br />
you to the edge of intoxication?<br />
“I’m not the kind of person who uses normal steels for the bob,” Nowak says to<br />
distance his tuning work from the series production of the fast sleds (he also does<br />
“tuning” for skeleton and tobogganing). That is an ambitious task, “because highalloy<br />
steels are hard to get under control when you are working them. For Susi Erdmann<br />
I used forged amagnetic steels to build her new runners. During the run they<br />
conduct heat very badly, which is an advantage.”<br />
INTO THE WIND TUNNEL<br />
Let’s put that more formally: the structural steel ST 37-2 (general structural steel, tensile<br />
strength 360 Newton per millimeter) is not really Nowak’s material for bob use. The<br />
friend of screws rather than welding (because of the frequently undefinable states of<br />
stresses) tends to prefer high-alloy steels of a kind (to name a very simple example)<br />
such as X 7 Cr 13. “You have to have a lot of experience with the materials,” he continues,<br />
“because an unmanageable steel tries to go in all possible directions, you have<br />
to begin to dress it because of the precision. But the result is extraordinary.” There he<br />
stands, next to his “apprentice” Stefan Drescher, in a small workshop in Winterberg –<br />
a kind of shrine into which no stranger has entry. Piece by<br />
piece the bob is taken apart, slowly it becomes visible what<br />
kind of high technology is hidden in the inside of the highgrade<br />
steel machine. With a careful hand Nowak presents<br />
his newest milled leaf spring, made of low warping, precipitation-hardening<br />
steel, followed by the steering head,<br />
runner blades, stabilizers and everything else that is part<br />
of the technical witchcraft. Witchcraft? Despite all the emotion<br />
Nowak radiates, in his reserved, almost introverted<br />
For Klaus Nowak and his protégé Stefan Drescher, the<br />
computerized data analysis of production materials and<br />
bobsleigh races is of paramount importance. Success<br />
requires a very considerable technical effort.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
Technician Klaus Nowak is certain that Stefan Drescher will deliver more and more top-class performances.<br />
For the bob pilot now knows his sled and its technical refinement inside out.<br />
way he is first and foremost an analytical thinker who leaves absolutely nothing to<br />
chance. Not with the fuselage (which he can even test in the wind tunnel of an automotive<br />
manufacturer), not with the runners nor with the other fine parts of the bob. He<br />
does not try to shake the physical facts: “With a hard track with tight curve combinations<br />
I need soft elements in the bob, these lead to better results.”<br />
He knows the extensive small print of the technical regulations of the international<br />
bob organization by heart, but there is something he knows even better: the tolerances<br />
of the regulations that allow new developments. Here, so it seems, is where<br />
Nowak sees his real field of work, in the creation of new materials, the working of them<br />
and their use – over whose final details he lays a cloak of silence. With the exception<br />
of Stefan Drescher. “Stefan now knows his machine exactly. He can install steering<br />
heads, change front axles, measure prestresses, in short, he knows what material he<br />
is riding with. On the way to the world elite this is absolutely necessary. I am certain<br />
that in a few years he will be up at the top worldwide.”<br />
TOWARD THE FINISH LINE ON LEAF SPRINGS<br />
To then, the bob amateur asks himself despondently, race down the bobsleigh track<br />
on the high-grade steel chassis as if bitten by a tarantula? Bob pilots are not despondent,<br />
not Stefan Drescher, even less Susi Erdmann. “I love everything that goes fast,”<br />
she says in her happy, carefree way. “For example go-kart driving: once a year we get<br />
into the karts because it is part of our training program. I’m thrilled at how fast you<br />
can drive with them – which of course is even surpassed by the bob.”<br />
Anyone who gets into such a steel-carbon fiber shell should know that this is a<br />
high performance and racing sport. You cannot earn very much, notes world champion<br />
Erdmann. Sponsors tend to be hesitant with funding, and then in relation to that<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
BOBSLEIGH RACING 11<br />
you need “gigantic” technical support with the newest<br />
and best material. “Nevertheless I still sled with the greatest<br />
enthusiasm, if possible until the year 2006, the<br />
Olympic Games in Turin."<br />
With Klaus Nowak at her side, one might add, that<br />
man who somehow stands for originality, respectability<br />
and a technical maximum. Always in search of further development,<br />
leaf springs he can bend in a cold state with a<br />
two-thousand-ton press at the company plant to avoid<br />
unfavorable changes. Thus in the end the gleaming light<br />
that on the bobsleigh track, figuratively speaking, is linked<br />
with the name Nowak, shines back on him and his company.<br />
Because he makes no secret of that either: without<br />
all the technical possibilities at Edelstahl Witten-Krefeld<br />
Nowak would not achieve the results he thinks up.<br />
If more people had the opportunity to sit in a bob<br />
themselves – the fascination about this “still” peripheral<br />
sport would grow to the greatest heights. Because one<br />
thing is certain: anyone who after one minute reaches the<br />
finish, as swift as an arrow in a high-tech vehicle, climbs<br />
out, shakes himself, gets his slightly out of joint bones<br />
back into plumb and says to himself: when does the next<br />
ride start? That is exactly what Klaus Nowak, the uncrowned<br />
“high priest of bob runners,” had predicted. He<br />
is right, absolutely right. 7
12 SPARKLERS<br />
Iron powder for golden stars<br />
By Sebastian Groß | Photos Michael Wissing
SPARKLERS 13
14 SPARKLERS
SPARKLERS 15<br />
An artistic composition of steel wires
16 SPARKLERS<br />
Sparklers with a bouquet of stars
SPARKLERS 17
18 SPARKLERS<br />
STICHWORT<br />
Perhaps the poets can help us discover the secret of the sparkler<br />
– or as Germans colorfully call it, the Wunderkerze, or “wonder<br />
candle.” The gnomes in Goethe’s “Faust,” for example, who<br />
called themselves “rock surgeons” and claimed to “fleece the high<br />
mountains” every day for metal. These gnomes are supposed to have<br />
ignited the spark in their laboratory, which enthused Faust so much<br />
that he could only exclaim, “Sparks are flying nearby / like disseminated<br />
golden sand."<br />
Georg Alef is not a poet, but a cheerful man from Eitorf, on the Sieg<br />
River in Germany’s Rhineland, who works with colleagues to research<br />
and develop fireworks at the Weco pyrotechnics plant. As a specialist for<br />
large fireworks, especially ones that can be synchronized with music, the<br />
team has already won the world championship of fireworks title in Montreal<br />
for their impressive combination of music and fireworks.<br />
A VERY COMPLEX PRODUCT<br />
There is little sign of these bursts of colors in the rather plain production<br />
hall in Eitorf. Moving quickly, Alef leads a visitor to the “diver” – not a<br />
gnome but an ordinary man who is an expert in safely and repeatedly dipping<br />
steel wires with a thin cover of copper, aligned in straight rows of 400<br />
on a board, into a somewhat thick gray liquid, pulling them out, briefly<br />
dripping them down and then placing them on a metal shelf to dry.<br />
Witchcraft? Far from it. The sparkler, which measures 17 centimeters,<br />
or almost 7 inches, is probably the most simple type of magic.<br />
Looked at prosaically, a few seconds of sparkling stars, a quiet crack-<br />
Ground iron with the right granulation<br />
ling and a soft fume pretty much make up the experience, and then the<br />
sparkler is burnt out. Yet creating it is not that simple.<br />
“For me, the sparkler is one of the most complicated systems that<br />
I know,” says Alef, and when asked what all this has to do with the subject<br />
of basic materials, he answers, “A lot.” For what sort of substance<br />
do sparklers burn? Iron powder and so-called sander dust, finely<br />
ground iron whose granulation can hardly be seen. This burns together<br />
with barium nitrate (as an oxygen carrier) in a type of in-house blast<br />
furnace process, with sparks flying, more or less.<br />
A FASCINATING OBJECT<br />
Alef is rather hesitant when addressing the question of whether he has<br />
given a comprehensive list of the sparkler’s ingredients; he finally admits<br />
that the gray liquid includes two types of aluminum, dextrin (a<br />
residue of farina) and flour as adhesive agents, then refuses to say<br />
more. The exact formula remains a carefully guarded business secret.<br />
“The product is very sensitive,” explains Alef. Which is understandable<br />
given the fact that the combination of oxidizing and metallic<br />
substances (for example, aluminum) can entail hefty reactions. In the<br />
worst case, the sparkler mash could boil and ignite itself: A fireworks<br />
factory must put an absolute premium on safety.<br />
Researching this inconspicuous object, which Weco calls “electric<br />
sparklers,” makes for a eureka experience for the lay person. It refers<br />
to a sparkling mind and it is based on an intelligently devised mixture.<br />
Invented by whom?<br />
Sparkler production is a<br />
difficult process. The immersion<br />
mass has to be just right,<br />
containing the correct mixture<br />
of iron powder and all the other<br />
materials. Only then will the<br />
sparkler really sparkle.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
At this point, the pyrotechnician has no answer. Nobody knows,<br />
says Alef. Even his boss, Lutz Kegler, an expert in his subject who heads<br />
Weco’s research and development department and will retire after 35<br />
years and 32 weeks in February, does not know. Sparklers have been<br />
around since the 19th century, he reports, and probably emerged when<br />
alkaline earth metals were first used. He, too, has experienced again<br />
and again just how sensitive sparkler production is. Take the example<br />
of iron powder: steel is sprayed into cold water to harden it and the steel<br />
breaks apart, yielding a square-edged grain. “The heating of the<br />
sparkler also causes tension tears. Sparks start to fly from the mass of<br />
the sparkler material, and continue to burn and get hotter, then burst<br />
again, which causes the star effect.” But according to Kegler, the consistence<br />
of iron powder presents a frequent problem. If it is too soft, it<br />
only yields threads, “and you could forget about that.” The powder has<br />
to be brittle, so that it breaks again.<br />
The precisely conceived mixture of finer and coarser granulation<br />
creates and outer and an inner bouquet – which is decisive for the high<br />
quality of sparklers which, as in the case of Weco, are immersed by<br />
hand.<br />
The “diver’s” job is a quiet business. With a practiced, careful<br />
hand he takes the board, dips the sparkler stems into the gray “brew”<br />
and with the same rhythm pulls them out again. After letting them partly<br />
dry, he repeats the process. The movement must be consistent, and<br />
the results not disturbed with uneven movements or even strong<br />
breezes, in order to maintain consistency.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
STICHWORT SPARKLERS 19<br />
If this is not done right, drops from a burning sparkler could run<br />
off and leave burn marks on clothing and carpets, or even cause a small<br />
burn to a child’s hand. And then the magic of the evening would most<br />
definitely be gone. It is not the technology that leads to a certain wonder,<br />
especially in children’s eyes, when a sparkler is ignited, but the<br />
dreams and – as the Germans would say – the wunder. It looks so<br />
harmless, and simple, but Alef stresses that there is frequent experimentation<br />
in an attempt to produce an even more brilliant, longer-lasting<br />
light. Metallic coatings have even been tried, Alef explains. “They<br />
looked good, but production was too difficult.”<br />
A BURNING SYMBOL<br />
So for now, at least, the wonder workers at Weco will leave the recipe<br />
unchanged. Sales are increasing, and the iron powder and the sander<br />
dust will be more than adequate to give people a little thrill. Alef notes<br />
that the material mixture is more potent than many people realize; iron<br />
burners are used as “a real industrial igniter” to fire the thermite mixture<br />
used to weld together railroad tracks.<br />
The sparkler has long become a symbol – for the sparks that we<br />
hope will fly from heart to heart, for the people who need to bring a little<br />
light into the darkness, but also for the “burnout syndrome,” in<br />
which people shine brightly at work but finally give too much, and have<br />
nothing left. A sparkler lasts only a very short time, after all. It is a symbolic,<br />
mysterious and even wondrous little thing whose discoverer we<br />
do not even know. 7
20 Y SLEEPERS
Sleepers for the sawed mountain<br />
A rack railway takes visitors up to Spain’s Montserrat monastery on triangular Y sleepers<br />
By Heribert Klein | Photos Bernd Jonkmanns<br />
What would the Montserrat monastery be without its angels! There would<br />
never have been this massif, located 30 kilometers northwest of Barcelona,<br />
from where it can be seen in the distance. In the dim and distant past, legend<br />
had it that the massif was so steep that no man had ever set foot on its height of<br />
1,200 meters, or more than 3,900 feet. Angels had to saw into the rock – Montserrat<br />
literally means “serrated mountain” – to make room for a palace whose glory was a<br />
beacon to the surrounding Catalan country.<br />
But let legend be legend. In the Middle Ages, the outlying, barely accessible<br />
massif was the site of a monastery founded by the abbot Oliva de Ripoll in the early<br />
11th century, where the monks lived according to the Regula Benedicti – the rule of<br />
the holy Benedict of Nursia. Their retreat into solitude, into the “desert,” made them<br />
into monachoi – monks – and the attraction of this way of life led people to come and<br />
live with them.<br />
THE ASCENT WAS AND REMAINS CUMBERSOME<br />
Nothing has changed in this respect. About 2.5 million people travel along this mountainous<br />
silhouette of Catalonia every year, although most of the trekking up to the<br />
monastery to the “Black Madonna” basilica is now done by car (via an often hair-raising<br />
route) or, more comfortably now, by train. A geographical formation that seems to<br />
rise like an island from flat water is, from a geological standpoint, a massif built on a<br />
pillar of Eocene conglomerate and sandstone layers roughly 60 million years old, covered<br />
by a block of Oligocene sediment stone that is formed from gravel, affected by<br />
the wind and the weather and therefore shaped starkly and of a rare steepness. The<br />
steep ascent had remained impassable or at least forbidding to most people, but has<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
A new era is starting for<br />
Montserrat, near Barcelona. For<br />
the first time since 1957, a<br />
narrow-gauge railway now runs up<br />
the steep mountain. <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong><br />
GfT Gleistechnik GmbH supplied<br />
the necessary track bed of<br />
stable Y sleepers.<br />
STICHWORT Y SLEEPERS 21
22 Y SLEEPERS
Y SLEEPERS 23<br />
A hermitage for millions of people<br />
The monastery mountain<br />
marks Catalonia’s silhouette.<br />
Legend has it that the angels<br />
sawed a gap in the rock<br />
to make room for a glorious<br />
palace that would help light up<br />
the lonely countryside.
24 Y SLEEPERS
ecome more inviting with the addition of a new narrow-gauge railroad that winds up<br />
the mountainside. It took many years to realize, because the original rack railway was<br />
closed down in 1957. The trip, which started in the village of Monistrol in 1892 and<br />
ended at the monastery, was over.<br />
SPACE IS A SCARCE COMMODITY ON MONTSERRAT<br />
It is as though the railroad awoke like a sleeping beauty, and the railcars have once<br />
again been making their way up and down for the past few months – not on a conventional<br />
track, but one with a “track bed of stable sleepers.” Only an expert speaks<br />
like that, and in this case the expert is Manfred Mahn, head of sales at <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong><br />
Gft Gleistechnik GmbH, a subsidiary of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Services.<br />
His office in Hannover’s Vahrenwald district bears little relation with the air of<br />
reverie at the hermitage in Montserrat, and yet there is a direct connection between<br />
Mahn and Montserrat: The railway leading up to the monastery over 8,624 meters<br />
needed new sleepers, and GfT Gleistechnik delivered nearly 5,000 of them.<br />
But this railway is not like any other, and the sleepers are not like any other<br />
sleepers, either. The stretch to the monastery would hardly be able to bear a highspeed<br />
train, and in fact a picturesque railway that quietly and unhurriedly approaches<br />
its oratory on the lofty heights is perfect in this meditative place. “The Y sleeper<br />
Cross-ties with<br />
their own geometry<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
Y SLEEPERS 25<br />
perfectly matches this purpose because its triangular<br />
shape is also particularly suited to light railways with a<br />
tight radius, and the Y sleepers are quieter than concrete<br />
sleepers,” Mahn explains.<br />
A shortage of flat surfaces on Montserrat meant any<br />
idea of installing heavy concrete sleepers measuring<br />
about two meters (six feet) and weighing more than 200<br />
kilograms, or 440 lbs., had to be immediately discarded.<br />
The angle of ascent is enormous: The railroad had to rise<br />
539 meters over a stretch of just a few kilometers. With<br />
space so tight, only limited use could be made of heavy<br />
machines, but the Y sleeper, which measures 1.5 meters<br />
and weighs only 120 kilograms, could be laid much more<br />
easily. Its narrower width is complemented by another advantage,<br />
Mahn explains: “We can lay the Y sleeper on old<br />
substance and do not have to alter an old, crusted and<br />
consolidated gravel bed. We use this existing subgrade to<br />
build a new gravel bed, which only becomes possible due<br />
to the sleeper’s low construction height of 95 millime-<br />
Montserrat attracts about<br />
two and a half million visitors<br />
each year. The narrow-gauge<br />
railroad now provides for a<br />
comfortable journey up to the<br />
monastery, in a tight radius<br />
on quiet cross-ties.
26 STICHWORT<br />
Y SLEEPERS<br />
The home of the Black Madonna<br />
ters,” or about four inches. It is the material combined with the geometrical shape that<br />
makes the Y sleepers so special. Just under 20 years ago, they were conceived and<br />
developed by the Salzgitter subsidiary Peiner Träger. <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> GfT took part in<br />
the design process, and the two companies jointly own the patent for this innovation.<br />
In 1997, Germany’s Federal Railroad Office approved the Y-Class, in addition to steel<br />
trough, concrete and wooden Y sleepers. Mahn sees ample market potential for this<br />
innovation because the German railroad’s route network has a length of about 33,000<br />
route kilometers, or 20,500 miles, of which two-thirds is suitable for the use of the Y<br />
sleeper. Today the sleeper is used mainly for stretches with speeds of up to 120 kilometers<br />
per hour.<br />
There is, of course, no need for this in Montserrat. People leaving their cars in<br />
Monistrol Vila (where there is parking for 1,000 vehicles and 100 buses) and stepping<br />
into the new rack train make their way up to the final stop at a maximum speed of 45<br />
km/h via. There are some tunnels, but also bridges and long stretches with a wonderful<br />
view of the plain at the bottom of the massif, from which the train seems to distance<br />
itself cog by cog.<br />
Time and timelessness are important concepts for all monasteries – so what is<br />
different about track construction? Says Mahn: “It takes several years before you no-<br />
The monastery is the final<br />
stop for the railway that departs<br />
from Monistrol, at the bottom<br />
of the mountain. The rack railway<br />
makes the ascent across<br />
bridges and through tunnels,<br />
presenting travelers with a<br />
wonderful view of the plain at<br />
the bottom of the massif.<br />
tice that fundamental mistakes have been made in the superstructure.<br />
Superstructure construction is a conservative<br />
technology that takes time. This is why the depreciation<br />
period for superstructure amounts to 25 years on<br />
average.” Y sleepers lay on gravel, a coarse stone, which<br />
has to be water-permeable because “the track has to be<br />
able to breathe.”<br />
SHAPES AS IN HALF-TIMBERED BUILDING<br />
Another advantage of the Y sleeper is the fact that it allows<br />
for the laying of seamlessly welded tracks in tight<br />
bends. Mahn does not even have to pick up the information<br />
brochure with all the details on the cross-tie: The passionate<br />
technician (who was also in charge of the complete<br />
solution for the production of the “gapless track” on<br />
the slab track in the LOS A (level of service) section on the<br />
high-speed connection between Cologne and Frankfurt<br />
on behalf of GfT Gleistechnik) knows all the relevant data<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
Y SLEEPERS 27
28 Y SLEEPERS<br />
on this Y sleeper system by heart. He explains that the<br />
well-known advantages stem above all from the triangular<br />
shape; known from the construction of half-timbered<br />
building, it has an advantage over the rhomboid shape of<br />
normal tracks in that it is much better at absorbing the<br />
side forces that press onto the track.<br />
Frame stiffness and lateral movement resistance are<br />
two factors that Mahn says have decisive competitive advantages,<br />
not to mention the lower gravel requirements,<br />
the lower transportation weight, a long lifecycle, excellent<br />
recycling capacity and the optimum flexibility of steel as a<br />
material for special types of construction.<br />
Too much at once? Mahn begs to differ. “Although I<br />
have a technical background, I see myself foremost as a<br />
sales person who, together with the production team, has<br />
to fulfill the customer’s wishes. My longstanding experience<br />
helps me here.” Above all his experience with Y<br />
sleepers, although the customer in Montserrat was also<br />
convinced of the functionality of the Y system and ordered it after seeing where Y steel<br />
sleepers with cog rails had been used for the first time on the Andermatt-to-Oberalp<br />
section of the Furka-Oberalp railroad.<br />
According to Mahn, this will certainly not have been the last project of this type.<br />
Quite the contrary: The expansion into eastern Europe, his local market research in<br />
such countries as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic and the prospect of contracts<br />
for the domestic German network cause him to be optimistic.<br />
MAN ON THE WAY INTO THE INNER WORLD<br />
Yet the Montserrat route will probably remain exceptional, thanks to its panoramic<br />
view, its ascent over rough and smooth, and its dramatic ups and downs (in air-conditioned<br />
carriages). Montserrat remains a symbol of independence, unassailability,<br />
firmness, religion and music. For centuries it has attracted people on pilgrimages, scientists<br />
like Wilhelm von Humboldt and artists like Friedrich Schiller, who wrote that<br />
Montserrat pulls a person from the outer world into the inner world. And not only that:<br />
Goethe wished Montserrat to everyone, convinced that “man alone can find happiness<br />
and rest on his own Montserrat."<br />
But we have to get up there first. 7<br />
A timeless symbol of happiness and rest<br />
The Montserrat monastery<br />
was founded by Benedictine monks.<br />
Monks still live here today in an<br />
incredibly beautiful environment. The<br />
ride on the rack railway makes clear<br />
why so many wonderful legends<br />
surround Montserrat.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
Y SLEEPERS 29
30 ASSEMBLED CAMSHAFTS<br />
To anyone who says he doesn’t have to deal with the camshaft,<br />
you can only agree: you’re right! But it would be worth your while<br />
nonetheless. Because in recent years much has happened regarding<br />
this component so important in combustion engines. Right up<br />
with the leaders is the company <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Presta. In just a few<br />
short years it has earned itself a good reputation with the manufacturing<br />
of “assembled camshafts” – very precisely purpose-built components<br />
that are now an indispensable feature of modern engine<br />
manufacturing.<br />
There is a camshaft working away in practically every vehicle with<br />
a combustion engine. Four-stroke petrol and diesel aggregates need<br />
them like the air to breathe, otherwise the fuel-oxygen mixture would<br />
not reach the combustion chamber nor would the exhaust gases get<br />
out. Only clattering two-strokes do without such a precisely manufactured<br />
gem in their housings.<br />
If you ask drivers about their desires regarding the modern vehicle,<br />
two answers are heard well ahead of all others: the car should be<br />
economical and ecological. In addition to all the factors that play a role<br />
here, naturally the engine is of great significance: if its consumption is<br />
low, the owner is happy. The advances in engine technology in recent<br />
years have been immense – diesel and petrol direct injection are just<br />
two major catchwords that broadly describe what has happened in and<br />
around the combustion chambers. And the around part includes the<br />
camshaft. Because all elements of an engine work as a team to ensure<br />
that the entire engine runs even more precisely and efficiently and that<br />
the fuel is better utilized. A combustion engine works like this: a gas-air<br />
mixture is conducted into a round space, the cylinder. This is closed off<br />
Breathing with the shaft<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Presta supplies a specialty<br />
for modern engines: assembled camshafts<br />
By Rüdiger Abele | Photo Andreas Böttcher<br />
on one side by a movable damper, the piston. When the gas is ignited,<br />
it expands suddenly and pushes the piston away, whose sliding movement<br />
is transformed by a mechanism into a revolution of the crankshaft,<br />
which in turn is conducted to the wheels. The vehicle moves. The combusted<br />
gas mixture is conducted out of the cylinder through another<br />
valve. The camshaft comes into effect at the valves: in the rhythm of the<br />
engine it controls the opening of the valves: open – mixture in; closed –<br />
exhaust out. You thus need at least two valves per cylinder, but for better<br />
combustion e.g. four valves have long since established themselves<br />
(“Four-Valve”). Because a car engine, for instance, seldom only has<br />
one cylinder, but rather in most cases four, it has four valves which need<br />
to be controlled, in a corresponding six cylinder engine there are 24 already<br />
– the calculation could be carried on accordingly.<br />
WELDED STEEL MEETS PRECISION STEEL<br />
Back to the camshaft: it consists of a tube on which the cams are fixed,<br />
whose shape is similar to a longitudinally cut chicken egg. It rotates<br />
continuously over the push rod; at its highest point it pushes the valve<br />
shut, at all other points of its rotational path it is slightly to completely<br />
open and lets the cylinder breathe. For every combustion chamber, at<br />
least one cam is responsible for two valves and ensures incoming and<br />
outgoing air. For better control, these days two camshafts per engine<br />
have already become widespread (one for the input and one for the output<br />
valves) and some aggregates already have four shafts.<br />
“Of course we are delighted at the increasing numbers,” says<br />
Hermann Weissenhorn, the divisional manager responsible for<br />
camshafts at <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Presta. Particularly as their specialty, the<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
“assembled camshaft,” is being very well received by the world’s engine<br />
manufacturers. “Assembled” means that the cam shaft is not<br />
forged into shape or cast from molten metal, but rather put together<br />
from individual, separately manufactured components: the tube with<br />
the mounted, but extremely firmly sitting cams and the bearing and<br />
drive elements. Using this method, the materials can be very precisely<br />
selected for their use and in accordance with the framework of costs:<br />
for example, the cams made of very wear-resistant forge steel or sinter<br />
material and the tube made of simpler precision steel.<br />
TUBE AND CAM BELONG TOGETHER<br />
With the Presta method this works as follows: a blank steel tube of<br />
exact length is fitted with the end piece, such as a cog, that later serves<br />
the camshaft drive; right now it is used to exactly position the tube at<br />
any given time during manufacturing – this is important so that the<br />
cams point in the right direction and the valves do not move out of cadence.<br />
A motor turns the tube at very high speed in order to apply the<br />
“rolling” at the place where, in a few moments, the cam will sit: a<br />
rather blunt tool presses into the tube steel, precisely pushes away<br />
material to the outside, so that fine, parallel rings are created whose<br />
diameter is five tenths of a millimeter greater than that of the tube. This<br />
is enough to fix the cam very firmly: the tube is stopped and the prefabricated<br />
cam is pressed onto the rolling, exactly in the prescribed relative<br />
position. Cam and tube are now non-destructively inseparable.<br />
The tube then rotates again for the next rolling, the second cam is attached<br />
– and so on until the desired number is reached. In between,<br />
bearings are also slid on. An initial quality check follows, before grind-<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
The “built cam shaft”<br />
offers a significant advantage:<br />
it is assembled from individual,<br />
separately manufactured<br />
components. The materials<br />
are selected specially for<br />
this application.<br />
ASSEMBLED CAMSHAFTS 31<br />
ing of the shaft is carried out – <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Presta supplies the<br />
camshafts to its customers ready to be installed. Another, more exact<br />
check follows, then the cam shafts are securely packed and sent<br />
around the globe so they can soon ensure the right degree of breathing<br />
in a car engine. The assembly of a Presta camshaft takes place<br />
fully automatically in manufacturing cells, lightning fast and with very<br />
tight cycle times. For a passenger car with a four cylinder engine, it is<br />
about 60 centimeters long and weighs one kilogram. The smallest<br />
camshaft made by Presta is used in a Harley-Davidson motorcycle –<br />
and is just 20 centimeters long.<br />
“With optimal design, the assembled camshaft can save up to 30<br />
percent in weight compared to conventional methods,” says Hermann<br />
Weissenhorn. The motor runs more smoothly, fuel consumption is lower.<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Presta, although rich in tradition, has not been in the cam<br />
shafts business for very long. Everything began in 1986. “First of all we<br />
spent six years doing basic research and looking into materials,” remembers<br />
Weissenhorn. Finally the process was ready – and the first big<br />
contract came from Ford, with delivery beginning in 1995. Since then<br />
things have moved steadily and steeply upwards. In 2003 more than 12<br />
million camshafts were manufactured for the great automotive manufacturers<br />
of the world, in two years the figure is expected to be more than<br />
16.5 million. And all of this with the greatest precision, tolerances in the<br />
area of hundredths and thousandths of a millimeter. “What we are doing<br />
is precision like that of a Rolex watch,” says Weissenhorn, “and we do it<br />
in large series.” For him the camshaft is more than just an inconspicuous<br />
piece of technology. “If I were bigger,” says the normal sized man<br />
with a smile, “I would wear it around my neck as an amulet." 7
32 OIL TOOLS
Photo Gettyimages<br />
The comparison to a raw egg appears to be far-fetched, but is<br />
nonetheless very close to the mark: Touching a drill pipe on one of<br />
these gigantic oil rigs, rotating it, lifting it, turning it round, is a difficult<br />
act – not to mention the loads with which they have to cope. However,<br />
on closer inspection, this means very little, for 1,380 metric tons usually<br />
pose no problems for special tools, the so-called oil tools.<br />
Jens Lutzhöft, production manager at Blohm + Voss Repair<br />
GmbH, Oil Tool Division – a <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Technologies company – has<br />
discovered this. With Hanseatic sobriety, he presents the intricately<br />
manufactured tools, which from an external observer’s viewpoint do not<br />
look impressive, in the workshop on the shipbuilding yard in Hamburg.<br />
It is hardly imaginable that one of these “Power Slips” could grasp und<br />
hold a drill pipe weighing 750 metric tons.<br />
What connection does this have to the topic of materials? “A great<br />
deal,” says Lutzhöft, “for touching a drill pipe is a highly sensitive task.<br />
The pipe can be up to one meter in diameter; however, the pipe itself<br />
has a comparatively low wall thickness. The tool must be adjusted precisely<br />
to it, otherwise the pipe will collapse.”<br />
THE WORLD MARKET LEADER IN OIL RIG TOOLS<br />
Undoubtedly, the market, or to be exact, customer requirements have<br />
changed. The times when, like in earlier days, drill pipes, irrespective of<br />
their diameter, were moved and screwed together by hand, are becoming<br />
increasingly a thing of the past. By more widespread use of remotecontrolled<br />
tools, people are now trying to avoid the danger that heavy<br />
sections could fall down and endanger people on an oil rig.<br />
This sounds simple, but it is difficult to achieve in reality. The regulations<br />
are strict, they are subject, for example, to the American Petroleum<br />
Institute, the American Bureau of Shipping classification company,<br />
Det Norske Veritas, Lloyds’ Register, along with German shipping<br />
classification society Germanischer Lloyd. The worldwide use of Blohm<br />
+ Voss oil tools makes it imperative that they can fulfill security stan-<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
Tough tools<br />
for heavy work<br />
on oil rigs<br />
Special Blohm + Voss Repair elevators<br />
can lift weights of up to 1,400 tons<br />
By Benedikt Breith | Photos Blohm + Voss<br />
Touching a drill pipe is a<br />
highly sensitive task. The “oil<br />
tools” have to be made from<br />
special materials so that pipes<br />
with a one-meter diameter<br />
but with a low wall thickness<br />
can be grasped without being<br />
destroyed.<br />
OIL TOOLS 33
34 OIL TOOLS<br />
A “power slip” has to be<br />
adjusted precisely to the drill<br />
pipes. Otherwise the pipe<br />
will collapse. Firmness and<br />
stretch limits have to be very<br />
high for this purpose.<br />
dards in any possible country. Moreover, it is part of the market value<br />
of, as Lutzhöft observes, “the world market leader in these tools,” to<br />
adhere to all existing security standards.<br />
Changing the materials used in these tools in such a way that the<br />
loads can become increasingly heavy was one of the challenges that<br />
Lutzhöft and his colleagues faced on the shipbuilding yard. The earlier<br />
specification, in which high-tensile material was cast, is no longer adequate.<br />
Strength and yield points had to be increased, “basically, with<br />
new chrome nickel alloys from which much more potential can be<br />
gleaned,” is how the production manager describes the circumstances.<br />
This was relevant for the heat treatment process via which the mechanical<br />
parameters could also be changed, he said.<br />
CLOSE INSIGHT INTO CRITICAL AREAS<br />
The pictures he loads onto his computer give a playful impression.<br />
The detailed view of the interior of such tools conveys its<br />
own aesthetics. Color shots show the expert at a glance the<br />
areas where the critical stress is. This in turn makes it clear to<br />
which zone the engineer must pay particular attention.<br />
What would happen otherwise? Many of the “elevators” –<br />
the technical term for the tools which lift loads from drill pipes<br />
while raising or lowering via sleeves – which are built in the spacious<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
workshop, can also certainly display damage, surface cracks which<br />
must be closed with great time and effort. After all, this is a prototype<br />
that will be tested with an overload until the material breaks – by a press<br />
weighing 4,000 metric tons, whose aspect alone instills respect, if not<br />
reverence. Nothing leaves the workshop without this type of loading<br />
tests. “Our tongs and elevator clamps must pass an overload test with<br />
one-and-a-half times the payload before delivery,” says Lutzhöft. “The<br />
oil companies want to see perfect certificates for all sections that carry<br />
loads. We need this quality system in order to do this.”<br />
The English language has a simple but graphic term for what the<br />
employees are manufacturing here: it is called “pipe handling equipment,”<br />
a euphemism for a portfolio that meantime comprises some<br />
200 tools that can themselves weigh more than two metric tons.<br />
Despite all the computer-controlled technology, the production of<br />
the tools for oil and gas production involves a great deal of manual<br />
labor. Therefore, the employees in the specially equipped workshop are<br />
absolute specialists, manufacturers who must have the same expertise<br />
in the materials as in heat treatment, strength, impact tests and elongation.<br />
It is a lucrative business. If the company succeeds in selling complete<br />
systems with power slip and elevators, such a contract is worth<br />
some €2.5 million. Of course, such contracts always entail great pres-<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
Stress tests for all<br />
eventualities<br />
OIL TOOLS 35
36 OIL TOOLS
sure to deliver on schedule. Major customers, such as U.S. company<br />
GlobalSantaFe, have extreme visions of tools that really can venture into<br />
hitherto unknown dimensions and demand elevators with leverage of<br />
almost 1,400 metric tons. Moreover, this is required in the shortest possible<br />
time, for time is money. Seven months should suffice. However,<br />
considering that three months are required to produce the necessary<br />
material, and four weeks for further preparations, it follows that very little<br />
time remains for manufacturing the prototype. “This stretches our<br />
ability to the limit,” says Lutzhöft. However, he does not say this by any<br />
means as a complaint, but emphasizes with visible pride in the understated<br />
manner that is his wont: “We still manage to satisfy the customer,<br />
because based on the materials we know already, we come up<br />
with innovative solutions in a short time.”<br />
FOCUS ON SERVICE AND MAINTENANCE<br />
Built and manufactured in Hamburg, the self-same city which from<br />
time immemorial has regarded the wide world as a playing field, the<br />
Blohm + Voss repair elevators make their journey for their customers<br />
to their destinations in America, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom,<br />
Singapore, China, India, South America and Canada. These are precision<br />
instruments that must be able to fulfill the most demanding requirements.<br />
Beginning with the materials, however, absolutely everything<br />
must also function in such a gripper tool. Otherwise, the entire<br />
competence of experts like Jens Lutzhöft is required – who apart from<br />
manufacturing the elevators are involved to at least the same degree<br />
in service and maintenance. 7<br />
Oil companies have ever<br />
higher expectations of their<br />
tools – expectations that<br />
Blohm + Voss Repair has to<br />
fulfill. Elevators and power<br />
slip are pushing into new<br />
dimensions, built with<br />
innovative materials that do<br />
not burst even when placed<br />
under extreme pressure.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
Quality tools for<br />
skilled workers<br />
OIL TOOLS 37
38 CAB DESIGN
By Sybille Wilhelm | Photos <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Elevator<br />
There could be no high-rises without elevators. What’s more, the invention<br />
of the elevator has turned the social structure of buildings<br />
upside down: not so many years ago it was the poor who had to<br />
trudge high up to their quarters – often in a cold attic, like Spitzweg’s<br />
“poor poet” – while the more convenient lower floors were reserved for<br />
the master of the house.<br />
But then the elevator started about 150 years ago to revolutionize<br />
the vertical housing hierarchy. Around 1900, building owners started<br />
converting the old domestic quarters into expensive rooms with a view,<br />
initially in American hotels and a short time later also in Europe. The old<br />
servants’ chamber became the penthouse.<br />
Since a sort of unwritten etiquette has always declared it inappropriate<br />
to stare too frankly at one’s fellow elevator passengers, people<br />
often do not know where to look when they are inside an elevator cab.<br />
A good idea, then, is to take a closer look at the elevator’s interior fittings,<br />
which can tell much about the architect, the latest fashions and<br />
even the country in which the building stands. In other words: there is<br />
such a thing as a culture of cab design.<br />
A NEW WORLD SHINES IN EVERY CAB<br />
If the elevator is rather small with a low ceiling, one is probably in Spain,<br />
eastern Europe or Asia. “In these countries people have no problem<br />
standing closer to others,” explains Rembert Horstmann, head of the<br />
central communication and marketing division at <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Elevator.<br />
In most Western countries, however, modern elevators are built as<br />
generously as possible so that passengers can usually have their own<br />
“space” – using the same principle that applies in public transit, where<br />
people instinctively avoid getting too close to their fellow passengers<br />
when a lot of seats are free.<br />
Up for a taste of<br />
the local culture<br />
Elevator design sometimes says a lot<br />
about a country and its customs<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
Square elevators are<br />
practical, while round ones are<br />
pleasing to the eye. Architects<br />
no longer hide elevators, but<br />
integrate them as a gem into an<br />
overall work of art.<br />
CAB DESIGN 39
40 CAB DESIGN<br />
If the side walls are made from stainless steel, one has arrived in<br />
the modernity of elevator construction. For in earlier times, elevators<br />
were usually made from wood – a material that today is used almost<br />
nowhere but in Spain and occasionally in North America. Safety factors<br />
usually speak against the use of these mobile wooden rooms, however:<br />
elevators are supposed to contain as little flammable material as<br />
possible. Not least for this reason, seven of every 10 elevators made by<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> are fitted with high-quality, corrosion-resistant stainless<br />
steel.<br />
Stainless steel offers another advantage: the elevators of<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Elevator are built for the middle- to upper market segments,<br />
and these customers want the cabs to reflect this exclusivity.<br />
“Although stainless steel isn’t exactly warm and cozy, it is elegant and<br />
of a high quality,” says Bernd Scherzinger, head of the sales center in<br />
Neuhausen near Stuttgart. In addition, the material has a long lifecycle<br />
and is more low-maintenance than the formerly popular metal sheets<br />
or formica plates widely used in the 1970s.<br />
Designers’ latest fashion fads are the “Korn 200” stainless steel,<br />
which is brushed and polished with a velvety shine, as well as stainless<br />
steel with a linen pattern, where even greasy fingers leave hardly a<br />
trace. Stainless steel can also be ordered with diamond patterns or a<br />
leather structure.<br />
Customers more concerned about prestige than about cleaning<br />
can order the exclusive, highly polished stainless steel and, if desired,<br />
decorate it with etched patterns. These rather grandiose stainless<br />
steels tend to be most popular in Asia. In Western countries, a large<br />
mirror wall will often be installed in the elevator wall facing the door, to<br />
make it easier for wheelchair users to reverse out of the elevator.<br />
Insight into the past and the present<br />
Customers from Arab countries, in particular, like their cabs to<br />
shine not only through stainless steel: in these countries, the sheets<br />
often twinkle in copper, brass or gold. “Countries like Germany usually<br />
have no golden elevators,” says Bernd Scherzinger. “That would be<br />
considered too sumptuous here.”<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> is regarded as the world's major producer of stainless<br />
steel, but, fortunately, that business does not depend primarily on<br />
elevator construction, where “we work with pharmaceutical doses,” explains<br />
Rembert Horstmann. “What you see when you look at an elevator<br />
gives the impression that it consists only of stainless steel,” but in<br />
fact <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> can produce the annual stainless steel demand of<br />
the worldwide elevator sector in about two weeks, he points out.<br />
THE FUTURE THRIVES ON TRANSPARENCY<br />
Other trends are emerging with regard to cab design. Transparency has<br />
been a fashion in elevator construction for the past few years, with one<br />
in five elevators built by <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> now consisting of glass. “That<br />
calls for totally different optical standards with regard to the shaft structure,”<br />
explains Scherzinger. For in the case of “normal” elevators, what<br />
the passenger does not see does not have to be beautiful, but merely<br />
practical, which is why the back of the cabin sheets, for example, is covered<br />
in insulation material, shafts consist of unadorned concrete, and<br />
steel sheets emerge behind just a few millimeters of stainless steel.<br />
In addition, all cabs are equipped with control systems that preclude<br />
crash scenarios known from Hollywood movies – which, incidentally,<br />
are purely fictional, because elevators have been crash-safe<br />
since 1853. Glass elevators also boast all normal safety elements, but<br />
these are kept as invisible as possible – which, of course, costs a lot
more money. Glass elevators are usually used as striking architectural<br />
features. In addition, they allow the customer in a department store to<br />
feel regal as he or she floats majestically above the busy scene below<br />
– while still spotting the odd item for purchase. The same transparency<br />
in railway stations and at airports serves mostly safety purposes: for<br />
one, passengers are better protected from crime, and terrorists cannot<br />
use elevator cabins to hide bombs.<br />
Glass elevators offer another advantage: “Nobody will scribble on<br />
the walls out of boredom,” says Bernd Scherzinger. “Because he will<br />
feel observed.” A simple mirror, incidentally, fulfills the same psychological<br />
purpose. “Even if the perpetrator sees only himself, he feels observed<br />
and gives up the idea of destroying something.”<br />
After years of a barely noticed existence as a carrier of loads, elevators<br />
today are also popular architectural objects. What used to be a<br />
necessary evil that had to be hidden away is today often considered an<br />
architectural gem that must be fitted into artful construction. Some architects<br />
thus forgo the space-saving rectangular or square shape and<br />
choose a more extravagant round shape. These days, the transition<br />
from the reception hall to the elevator has to be as harmonious as possible<br />
– for example, through the choice of the same floor covering, such<br />
as marble or tiles. Or a less dominating standard surface is chosen.<br />
The elevator ceiling also usually captivates attention through its<br />
simple elegance. It is supposed to dispense light and air and otherwise<br />
be rather inconspicuous, but it should be worthwhile to look up: lighting<br />
ranges from classical lamps, halogen spots and a coffer ceiling to<br />
indirect lighting and laser-cut patterns in the ceiling sheets – all of which<br />
is also used to illuminate bigger rooms. Often, ventilators are hidden<br />
above the heads – a must, for example, in the humid, warm climate pre-<br />
Facelifting stirs emotions:<br />
in Stuttgart’s SI Center and in<br />
the Ana Grand Hotel in Vienna<br />
(photos far left) the elevator<br />
cabs look much older than they<br />
really are. In banks, in turn,<br />
modern elevators reflect sober<br />
professionalism.<br />
CAB DESIGN 41<br />
vailing in much of Asia. Invariably, there are air boxes in the door area.<br />
“So nobody will suffocate even if the elevator gets stuck,” says<br />
Scherzinger, contradicting another frequently heard prejudice.<br />
The base boards and the hand rail are equally inconspicuous and<br />
practical. The wooden or stainless steel bars at hip height may be used<br />
for support, but they are intended above all to prevent trolleys and other<br />
such things from banging against the elevator sides. Wood looks more<br />
elegant here, but it is more sensitive than stainless steel.<br />
AESTHETICS REACH DOWN TO THE SMALLEST DETAIL<br />
Finally, the very visible core of any elevator is the so-called service<br />
panel, which determines where the journey is going. The most commonly<br />
used system these days is the push button, which established itself<br />
in the 1920s. At the time, it rendered the job of elevator operator<br />
superfluous because the “self-drivers” – i.e. the passengers – were<br />
able to handle the complicated technical process in the background<br />
quite easily by themselves.<br />
But the push button itself will soon come under pressure, since<br />
the next generation of elevators will be steered with so-called touch<br />
screens mounted in a central location outside the elevator entrance on<br />
every floor; passengers will simply touch a small screen that no longer<br />
has to be installed in the elevator. Such operating systems are now<br />
available, and seek out the most intelligent routes for the individual elevators.<br />
This saves energy, time and space in the building.<br />
Once more, this destination selection system becomes part of cab<br />
aesthetics, which, irrespective of the design and the material used, will<br />
continue to mirror a number of things but one above all: the culture of the<br />
country in which the elevator transports its passengers. 7
42 MASTER BUILDER
Every one of the estimated 9 million people who visit Cologne<br />
Cathedral every year is overcome by a feeling of amazement at the<br />
sheer unending mountain of stone that appears to be trying to virtually<br />
touch the sky.<br />
Admittedly humanity has rubbed throughout the ages at what<br />
poet Heinrich Heine described in his “Stänkerreimen” (“Moaning<br />
Rhymes”) as a “Bastille of the spirit.” He did not like the cathedral. To<br />
him, it was a “colossal companion... it towers devilishly black / that is<br />
Cologne Cathedral.”<br />
Indeed, the black aspect of its exterior has not changed, nor has<br />
the fact that the cathedral, from an architectural point of view, is and will<br />
remain a building site. Who would know this better than Barbara<br />
Schock-Werner, the first woman to work in the outstanding office of<br />
cathedral master builder since Jan. 1, 1999?<br />
Building site or not, the master builder first and foremost has clear<br />
principles, of course: “The cathedral is a monument memorial for God.”<br />
It is not a monument to the destruction of war or to the destructive effects<br />
of harmful substances in the environment, nor is it a museum, but<br />
a church, period. This is what it is and will remain.<br />
On this irrefutable premise, it is all the easier to regard the cathedral<br />
as a building site with the most diverse requirements. It is a wonderful<br />
area for materials, for example steel. Schock-Werner has a clear<br />
opinion on this: “Steel is a special product. In the higher sections, in<br />
particular, we like to use stainless steel, since it is the only thing that can<br />
cope with the constant battering by wind and weather.”<br />
The <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel segment will literally make a stabilizing<br />
contribution to the cathedral this year by supplying stainless steel cor-<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
MASTER BUILDER 43<br />
Stainless steel for a revered church<br />
Cologne Cathedral is Germany’s most famous attraction.<br />
Barbara Schock-Werner is the cathedral master builder – “a really marvelous task”<br />
By Heribert Klein | Photos Barbara Klemm<br />
ners. The visitors’ galleries in the south tower in the airy heights of<br />
around 100 meters, daily frequented by thousands of people, need new<br />
steel beams. <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel will deliver them. “The bad weather<br />
has also destroyed these supporting corners,” says the master builder<br />
laconically. On the other hand, the wear and tear is enormous, for the<br />
numerous tourists willingly accept what is merely a challenge to their fitness<br />
and trudge up to this visitors’ gallery step by step. The unrestricted<br />
view across the broad expanse of Cologne over to the horizon, which<br />
appears to be lost in the distance, is worth the physical effort. The<br />
question of why only stainless steel is therefore used throughout the<br />
cathedral, both inside and out, when supporting sections must be replaced,<br />
directs Schock-Werner into fundamental considerations: “All of<br />
our measures aim to make us as superfluous as possible. Or to put it<br />
another way: the material should last as long as possible.”<br />
THE WEATHER HAS DESTROYED SUPPORTING CORNERS<br />
This confirms a pearl of wisdom that is as old as the cathedral itself: If<br />
it is ever completed, then eternity has begun. That could take some<br />
time. Therefore, one is content with its non-completion, and promptly<br />
turns it into a theory like the one the poet Heine had developed: “It was<br />
not completed – and that is good / For the non-completion / Makes it<br />
into a monument to Germany’s power / And Protestant mission.”<br />
The master builder cannot relate to this type of poetry. When she<br />
was elected to her office a few years ago, to the surprise of many external<br />
observers, she was immediately pigeonholed: Catholic, good<br />
head for heights, female, vigorous, vivacious, strong-willed, a whirlwind<br />
who wears the trousers.<br />
The cathedral master builder<br />
pursues a sustainable goal: the<br />
material is supposed to last<br />
as long as possible. A stainless<br />
steel net offers protection to<br />
visitors of the south tower – while<br />
still allowing for a view of both<br />
the interior and the outside.
44 MASTER BUILDER<br />
She looks very elegant and stylish in her trousers suit in her little<br />
office in a building on the Domplatte, Cologne’s Cathedral Square.<br />
Desk, visitors’ table and cupboards all exude the charm of pieces of furniture<br />
that have outlived the past. However, the computer on her desk<br />
makes it immediately clear that Barbara Schock-Werner is not living in<br />
the past – by no means. “We are living in the present and are therefore<br />
modern. I want to demonstrate this outwardly too. I am fulfilling a function<br />
here, I use the materials of our time – and I will disappear again in<br />
a few years, when old age comes.”<br />
She is not lacking in examples. Modern materials such as stainless<br />
steel were purposely put to use in the newly renovated treasure<br />
vault, which can gain a lot from them because of their elegance, aesthetics<br />
and clear lines.<br />
As is always the case with aesthetic categories, they say a great<br />
deal about the person they proclaim. Certainly, Cologne Cathedral is<br />
much more than a contemptible building site for the head of the Dombauhütte,<br />
the cathedral building works. Correspondingly, Barbara<br />
Schock-Werner would never describe her function as a job, but rather<br />
as a “really marvelous task” in which, as she honestly admits, there are<br />
sometimes days when she has the impression that normality is the exception,<br />
and on the other hand that abstruse, peculiar and crazy events<br />
are the rule. Nonetheless, the cathedral master builder does not seek<br />
confrontation, but discussion, in order to find a balance between the<br />
various interests.<br />
THE CATHEDRAL MASTER BUILDER IS IN CONTROL<br />
It is really fortunate that the cathedral belongs to itself, and to no one<br />
else. Under law, the cathedral is registered to itself – which is why no<br />
one can make any claims to ownership. However, they can claim to perform<br />
patronage duties or charitable works, in the manner of the<br />
Domkapitel, the cathedral chapter, for example, or the Dombauverein,<br />
the cathedral construction society.<br />
Anyone who is the focal point of such different lobbies requires a<br />
personal robustness. No one would deny that the 50-year-old master<br />
builder has this, from background onwards. She grew up in Stuttgart.<br />
Her Swabian craftsman’s family left its mark: “I went through the German<br />
education system diagonally, so to speak: Mittlere Reife [the German<br />
intermediate school certificate], then trained as a draughtswoman,<br />
because I was always interested on the one hand in art and on the other<br />
hand in mathematics. This was followed by the study of architecture at<br />
the technical university in Stuttgart.” To continue the diagonal: On the<br />
side, she also completed practical training on a building site as a brick-<br />
Supporting<br />
steel corners
The visitors’ galleries in<br />
the south tower at a height of<br />
100 meters need new steel<br />
beams. The stainless steel<br />
profiles of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel<br />
will resist the wear and tear<br />
of the weather.<br />
MASTER BUILDER 45
46 MASTER BUILDER
layer and later trained with a carpenter. She makes no secret of her examination<br />
work: a two-draft chimney, which she built herself.<br />
Did all of this predestine her to follow in the footsteps of Master<br />
Gerhard, the first medieval master builder who in turn was influenced<br />
by the most medieval of all thinkers, the scholar Albertus Magnus?<br />
It is no aesthete’s job to be master builder of the cathedral in<br />
Cologne. If one wishes, it is the application of the knowledge of the<br />
seven liberal arts of antiquity – the “trivium” (grammar, rhetoric and<br />
logic) and the “quadrivium” (arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy).<br />
It is heavenly harmony in a very earthly house, which, thanks to its<br />
geometry, however, moves people in large and small things. Who could<br />
not be impressed, standing lost in a building that measures 400,000<br />
cubic meters in volume? In this regard, Schock-Werner is no different to<br />
any other tourist who strides, strolls or shuffles through the cathedral.<br />
Is it the work on a gigantic facade, a kind of sham church? No, the<br />
master builder of the Dombauhütte would categorically refute this. The<br />
latest scientific research findings are used in stone conservation, for example<br />
in the acrylic impregnation process, in which stones are saturated<br />
with epoxy resin methyl methacrylate, which in turn polymerizes in<br />
the interior of the stones. She would also like to work with metallurgists<br />
to gain an insight into which of the steel alloys used are particularly resistant<br />
to the elements. There is enough room for the respective tests,<br />
high up on the towers of the stone house. In any case, the use of stainless<br />
steel is indispensable today, if new steel sections or supports are<br />
required.<br />
Paying due attention to detail in a large, indeed, gigantic concept<br />
is what the cathedral master builder regards as her task. Heavily enriched<br />
in details, stretching from the foundation right up to the tops of<br />
the towers, the restoration will never come to an end. Is this a frustrating<br />
prospect? Here, too, she ranks herself into a long-standing tradition<br />
A bridge to eternity<br />
The cathedral will never<br />
be completed, for preserving<br />
a space of 400,000 cubic<br />
meters is a never-ending task.<br />
If it is ever completed, then<br />
eternity has begun. But that<br />
can take time.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
MASTER BUILDER 47<br />
in both the direct and the figurative sense: “The church in a secular<br />
world: That is the picture I have of this cathedral, and it is the picture of<br />
the church today. I want to be involved in working on this church.”<br />
At least it is not a Sisyphean task. The progress is definitely visible.<br />
For example, the war damage is becoming increasingly less obvious.<br />
A flying buttress in the choir, which was damaged during the war,<br />
was replaced with a new one. This year, the so-called “filling” will be<br />
sealed – a patched area that was covered up quickly with tiles in<br />
makeshift fashion in 1944. “A very complicated place with an intricate<br />
structure and exquisite sculptures, the restoration of which we are now<br />
bringing to a close, however.”<br />
THE CATHEDRAL MASTER BUILDER CANNOT BE A DREAMER<br />
Sisyphus, according to Camus, must have been a happy man, since he<br />
found meaning in the absence of meaning. Maybe Schock-Werner’s<br />
unruffled calm and almost Rhineland-like carefree manner has saved<br />
her from such nihilistic romancing on meaning. She has nothing<br />
against the term “conservative,” not least because of her profession,<br />
as an expert in matters of maintaining and preserving. However, her<br />
thinking is always directed toward the future, which explains her inquisitiveness<br />
in matters of materials research and stone conservation.<br />
Incidentally, if one is running an operation like the Dombauhütte, with<br />
more than 80 staff, a budget of several million euros and a considerable<br />
outward effect, like she is, one cannot be a dreamer, but must have<br />
one’s feet firmly on the ground.<br />
She does this, with verve, with the greatest conviction that the<br />
task of being cathedral master builder in Cologne is a dream profession.<br />
After all, she is working on a construction that builds a bridge to eternity<br />
and not, as Goethe wrote rather smugly, like a “fairytale of Towers of<br />
Babel on the banks of the Rhine.” 7
48 LiDONIT<br />
By Sebastian Groß | Photos Rainer Kaysers<br />
Slag isn’t refuse, but is generated in steel production,” says<br />
Michael Joost, who works in the corporate development department<br />
of DSU, Gesellschaft für Dienstleistungen und Umwelttechnik.<br />
It is part of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Services and is partly owned by the asphalt<br />
specialist DEUTAG.<br />
The new product he is talking about is called LiDonit, a word that<br />
actually has a very simple origin, despite its cryptic appearance. Joost,<br />
a trained processor, does not give the impression that he is selling an<br />
object that he knows only from hearsay, and when he says that “the<br />
devil is in the details” in LiDonit you believe him because he can explain<br />
every last thing about it, starting with the name: “LiDonit is a registered<br />
trademark created from the name of the Austrian steel works in Linz-<br />
Donawitz and the steel production process of the same name, and the<br />
Greek word for stone (lithos).”<br />
He then explains just what this trademarked product is: “A synthetic<br />
mineral substance that is generated in the smelter process in<br />
steel production, which is rich in calcium-silicate.”<br />
HOW THE MINERAL SUBSTANCE COMES TO LIFE<br />
The abstract explanation in his office in Duisburg-Ruhrort becomes tangible<br />
when, equipped with a helmet, protective glasses, heavy shoes<br />
and a protective jacket, Joost takes a visitor to the place where this<br />
wondrous mineral substance is brought to life: Steel works No. II of<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Stahl AG in Duisburg-Beeckerwerth, Germany.<br />
Seeing a cast remains an impressive experience. Inside are the elementary<br />
powers of fire, which with the help of injected oxygen spark a<br />
unique flush of flame in the filled oxygen steel converter, while bringing<br />
liquid crude iron, scrap and additives to the boil. The process seems to<br />
take the observer back to the volcanic eruptions of former eons, when<br />
Driving on<br />
fine chippings<br />
LiDonit is the name of the stabilized<br />
slag that is generated in steel production.<br />
It is a sustainable product because it<br />
is used in road construction
LiDonit is a granulated<br />
material that is “cracked down”<br />
in large breakers. Bulldozers<br />
have previously emptied the bed<br />
into which the slag was poured<br />
from hoppits.<br />
LiDONIT 49
50 LiDONIT
LiDONIT 51<br />
A mineral substance with potential<br />
In the tilting process from<br />
the converters, the slag is separated<br />
from the crude steel. Blown-in<br />
oxygen swirls quartz sand together<br />
with the slag into a valuable raw<br />
material. LiDonit cools down for one<br />
week in the bed before being<br />
stored in its processed form as<br />
a finished product.
52 LiDONIT<br />
the earth slowly and over years and millenniums took its (presently<br />
cooled) shape.<br />
Yet the converter not only produces the valuable crude steel<br />
mass, but also the slag, which is all too often referred to a waste product.<br />
“When the container is emptied, the crude steel is separated from<br />
the slag,” explains Joost. In the tilting process, the converter tilts to the<br />
left and then to the right, and 27 tons of the reddish-yellow, simmering<br />
slag are poured into the waiting hoppit – which slowly rolls away moments<br />
later, to the only plant in the world where the Linz-Donawitz slag<br />
is stabilized.<br />
WHY LIDONIT IS A VALUABLE MINERAL SUBSTANCE<br />
Seeing the later, final form of LiDonit is amazing – a granulated material<br />
that, in expert speak, is “cracked down” to different granulations in<br />
large breakers like those used in quarries.<br />
Which still does not tell us where the synthetic mineral substance<br />
will eventually be used: as a core component of an asphalt cover on<br />
roads.<br />
“The stabilized slags display a very high level of volume stability<br />
and equally strong firmness,” says DSU’s Joost. “In the sense of sustainable<br />
usage, LiDonit is an ideal material that should be just as interesting<br />
for road builders as for environmental politicians” concerned<br />
about conserving resources, he adds.<br />
For not only the steel, but also the slag as such is a product with<br />
value creation potential – what more can you expect of a basic material<br />
these days? Especially when communities do not want “slag heaps”<br />
scarring the countryside?<br />
Two <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> divisions cooperate on this process. Carl-<br />
Heinz-Schütz, the director for the metallurgy and heavy plate business<br />
A slag with<br />
a strong grip<br />
in the crude steel division and the holder of a doctorate in engineering,<br />
makes no secret of his satisfaction that this use for slag has been<br />
found. Schütz, who is in his late fifties, conveys the sort of laid-back attitude<br />
that one would associate with the rhythmically regulated processes<br />
in the steel works. As always, calmness exudes strength – which,<br />
however, is no argument against speed. Schütz reports that the steel<br />
experts welcomed the idea at the end of the 1990s to produce fine chippings<br />
“by using a lance injector to blow in oxygen and, without a mechanical<br />
stirrer, swirl the quartz sand to stabilize the slag.”<br />
The silicon dilutes the slag, because, as Schütz explains, “The<br />
lower the ratio of calcium to silicon oxide, the more fluid the slag. By<br />
mixing in quartz sand, free chalk particles are bound in the calciumsilicate.”<br />
It is a process that cannot be observed without special protection.<br />
The lance injector creates such a gleaming white light that color filters<br />
on goggles are needed to protect the eyes from lasting damage. Nearly<br />
15 minutes later, the LiDonit mass is ready. And then?<br />
According to Joost, the idea for this mineral substance came from<br />
an attempt to find a sensible use for chalk-rich slags that otherwise<br />
cannot be used in road construction. “In this way we increasingly return<br />
mineral substances to the natural cycle. Slags with a high share of free<br />
chalk particles, which normally cannot be used because of their volume<br />
instability, are becoming really interesting for road builders.”<br />
Steel works No. II could produce 200,000 tons of LiDonit through<br />
the stabilization process, and according to Joost the demand is increasing.<br />
At present, 120,000 tons of blistering hot, stabilized LD slag<br />
leaves the works every year to be left to change from a liquid state into<br />
a solid state just a few hundreds meters away. Beds have been created<br />
for this purpose – not the sort of beds we think of in association with<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
LiDonit is an example<br />
of DSU’s ability to develop<br />
innovative products.<br />
Demand for this slag is<br />
growing because the<br />
Germans’ favorite hobby,<br />
driving, benefits from it.<br />
LiDONIT 53<br />
gardening, to be sure, but purely functional beds that are not without<br />
their own strange beauty: the mix of colors can be delightful when the<br />
new slag flows into the black bed and on to already emptied, markedly<br />
cooled slag. The hoppit rolls up and is emptied again and again for<br />
several days in a row, and the resulting mass needs a week to cool<br />
down for crystalline solidification. The quality is shown by the fact that<br />
the surface of LiDonit does not stand out like rough sheets of ice, but<br />
solidifies with total evenness – after a week the bulldozers arrive to<br />
empty the bed.<br />
Skips then take care of the transportation to the breaker, from<br />
where the stabilized slag is taken to the road builder. Mixed with bitumen,<br />
fiber and mineral substances, the resultant material assures<br />
cars of a better grip on the road while protecting the pavement from<br />
heavy loads.<br />
WHY LIDONIT PROTECTS OUR ENVIRONMENT<br />
“Slag management” is the name of the offer provided by Joost and<br />
DSU as a service provider. Even if the production of LiDonit costs<br />
money, Joost detects immense, partly unrecognized potential in this<br />
mineral substance. And “LiDonit protects our environment. The use of<br />
this material safeguards natural resources.”<br />
Is this already known to all those politicians who have committed<br />
themselves to the careful use of natural resources? If LiDonit were not<br />
used, more natural stone would have to be broken out of quarries and<br />
transported to road building projects.<br />
Joost predicts that the times when new slag heaps are being approved<br />
will soon be over, and that the time for LiDonit will really come.<br />
Slag, he says, is far more than just refuse. “Fine chippings” is what<br />
Michael Joost calls DSU’s LiDonit. 7
54 NEWSTEELBODY
The car of<br />
the future will<br />
be an affair for<br />
lightweights<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel’s NewSteelBody<br />
is a model of the finest steel materials<br />
By Rüdiger Abele | Photos <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel<br />
The dynamic handling of<br />
the production material steel<br />
makes the NewSteelBody<br />
so light and stable. The body<br />
side members at the front, for<br />
example, are pressed into shape<br />
by hydroforming and contain<br />
steels of different strengths.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
NEWSTEELBODY 55<br />
Stability and lightness, two important goals in the construction of<br />
modern car bodies, demand modern materials that keep their<br />
strength while lending themselves especially well to being formed<br />
into useful new shapes. <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel can offer a number of such<br />
materials.<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel caused a sensation at the 2003 edition of the<br />
world’s biggest car show, the IAA in Frankfurt, with the introduction of<br />
a minivan body in white that was just as stable as the one in the reference<br />
model – the popular Opel Zafira – but 24 percent lighter and only<br />
a shade more expensive.<br />
It wasn’t only the engineers who were excited about the “New-<br />
SteelBody,” as the project is known: When it comes to market, anyone<br />
buying a vehicle using this new technology will enjoy significant savings<br />
in fuel costs over the life of his or her car.<br />
HIGH-STRENGTH STEEL FROM MODERN FABRICATION<br />
“With the NewSteelBody, we wanted to show what is possible today,”<br />
explains Dr. Markus Weber, an engineer and head of the Auto Division<br />
of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel in Duisburg. He stresses that “<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong><br />
Steel isn’t getting into car making,” but that the NewSteelBody represents<br />
an invitation by the company to car makers to notice – and take<br />
more advantage of – the company’s skills as a supplier, “Because hardly<br />
anybody knows more about steel than we do.”<br />
An important part of the NewSteelBody concept was to produce it<br />
with materials and technologies already on hand. It is a mix of different<br />
ideas: high-strength steel that can be worked under the most modern<br />
fabricating technology when necessary or, when it suffices, with more<br />
conventional methods.<br />
“This intelligent mixture makes the NewSteelBody so light at a<br />
very reasonable cost,” says the project manager, Bernhard Osburg,<br />
adding that the NewSteelBody costs only 2 percent more than conven-
56 NEWSTEELBODY<br />
tional auto bodies. “Extremely important in this is the expert engineering.<br />
It was the only way to optimize all the advantages of the steel,”<br />
whose strengths can perhaps best be demonstrated with a figure: the<br />
walls of some parts of the NewSteelBody are only 0.9 millimeter thick.<br />
That’s barely 0.035 of an inch.<br />
Opel showed an unusual openness with the project, making all of<br />
the Zafira’s engeineering data from the Computer Aided Design (CAD)<br />
process available, much to Osburg’s delight. “That is very rare, because<br />
it makes the entire car transparent,” he explains.<br />
But the data was extremely important and valuable, because it<br />
provided absolutely realistic technical values for the rigidity and the<br />
crash test results of the NewSteelBody. The <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel team<br />
went to work and designed the entire body by computer; as is now common<br />
in car design, computer-simulated crash tests using the latest<br />
standards were carried out to test stability. In the end, a fully built, lifesize<br />
quarter-section was completed for presentation to IAA visitors and<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel customers. “In five years, it could be in line pro-<br />
High strength and an exquisite shape<br />
duction,” Osburg says enthusiastically. And in the interval? The time<br />
will be used to develop a new vehicle, although an advantage of the<br />
NewSteelBody concept is that its use is not limited to being installed in<br />
its entirety in a car specially designed for it; it can be incorporated in different<br />
parts and components that can be introduced gradually into cars<br />
that are already in production.<br />
COMPREHENSIVE KNOW-HOW ON NEW MATERIALS<br />
About half the NewSteelBody consists of stamped parts, and the other<br />
half of sealed, thin hollow sections. A thinning process is used for the<br />
body side members, front and back, as well as the roofrail: thin-walled<br />
tubes are prepared to the approximate size needed and then pressed<br />
into their precise shape by hydroforming, a process whereby water is<br />
injected from the inside at extremely high pressure.<br />
The body side members at the rear are made out of “tailored<br />
tubes” constructed by combining steels of different strengths, depending<br />
on the load, whereas the front side members are produced from<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
conical tailored tubes – like a fanfare trumpet, their diameter steadily increases<br />
while maintaining consistent wall strength. This form allows the<br />
beams to absorb the energy from a crash much better than a cylindrical<br />
steel beam can.<br />
Working with high-strength steel requires technicians who really<br />
know the material; people who recognize, for example, that when being<br />
pressed into different forms some steels not only take on a new shape<br />
but become stronger. “The structure changes,” explains Markus Weber,<br />
citing the example of a paper clip that is bent back and forth: it eventually<br />
breaks in two, not because the metal gets soft but for the opposite<br />
reason – namely that the stress makes the metal hard, and hence brittle.<br />
Naturally, high-strength steel used in a car should not break in<br />
case of an accident, and the parts are accordingly designed in a way<br />
that their fabrication does not bring them to the limit of their stability<br />
but always leaves a degree of elasticity that in a collision can absorb<br />
energy from a crash. “A lot of auto makers simply don’t have this com-<br />
The way from the<br />
computer to serial production<br />
is not far for the<br />
NewSteelBody: in five years’<br />
time, it could be hitting the<br />
road. A current minivan serves<br />
as the practical example.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
NEWSTEELBODY 57<br />
prehensive knowledge about our new materials,” says Weber. “But<br />
we’ll be glad to pass it on to them.” The NewSteelBody is a transparent<br />
system, and anyone interested in its applications can receive all<br />
relevant data and technical details from <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong>. “We make<br />
everything accessible to the auto makers,” and the reaction has been<br />
very positive, Weber adds.<br />
SHAPING THIN-WALLED PROFILES<br />
New materials, including even more stable steels, will mean further,<br />
continuing improvements to the NewSteelBody. Both Weber and Osburg<br />
believe that the steel can be formed and hardened in even more<br />
favorable ratios, and that the thin-walled profile can be shaped even<br />
more effectively.<br />
Whatever changes are made to it, the NewSteelBody is already<br />
assured of a role in helping to make sure that tomorrow’s cars are<br />
lighter and more fuel efficient, while remaining at least as stable and<br />
safe as today’s vehicles. 7
58 INTERVIEW
We need young people<br />
with a fascination<br />
for basic materials<br />
An interview with Prof. Dr. Ulrich Middelmann,<br />
Vice Chairman of the Executive Board of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> AG<br />
Photos Claudia Kempf<br />
Professor Middelmann, <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> AG is Germany’s biggest basic<br />
materials and capital goods company. Does its competence in materials<br />
constitute the company’s real capital?<br />
It is a fact that our materials competence runs through our entire group,<br />
starting with development and production in the Steel segment. Take<br />
the Automotive segment, for example: on a metallurgical basis, we<br />
have developed extensive competence in the remolding of outer panels.<br />
Through hydroforming we can use high pressure to press hollow<br />
steel bodies into complicated shapes. Or take crankshafts: they, too,<br />
display a very high level of materials competence, and the same applies<br />
to shock absorbers and camshafts. In summary, the example of<br />
cars optimally exemplifies our innovative way of dealing with basic materials,<br />
and highlights our competence in this area.<br />
You name the basic material of steel as an example. But don’t you work<br />
with a multitude of different basic materials?<br />
It’s true that we deal with a lot of basic materials, and new ones are<br />
being added, such as magnesium, which was cast as a flat product for<br />
the first time in Freiberg, Saxony. It would be a breakthrough for us if we<br />
managed to produce magnesium flat products in a cost-efficient manner,<br />
because this would allow us to offer a full-service concept for light<br />
construction. It would be a model product, particularly in the sense of<br />
sustainable production. But you have to remember that our company<br />
has a set materials pyramid. This hierarchy starts with bulk steels at the<br />
bottom, then up to carbon quality steels, then stainless steels and then<br />
basic nickel alloys at VDM with a nickel content of more than 30 percent.<br />
The titanium alloys top the pyramid.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
What do the value proportions of this pyramid look like?<br />
INTERVIEW 59<br />
The proportions are clearly defined. The value of a ton of VDM steel, for<br />
example, is about €15,000, while the titanium alloys’ value is much<br />
higher. The Nirosta price per ton is between €1,500 and €2,500, while<br />
the value of normal coated carbon steel is about €500. This is the materials<br />
price range. But quality has to be juxtaposed with quantity, and<br />
then the pyramid reverses: We produce 15 million tons of carbon steel,<br />
compared to 2.5 million tons of stainless steel, and 29,000 tons of VDM<br />
steels.<br />
Does this mean that the basic material of steel has potential – perhaps<br />
unforeseen potential?<br />
The motto for the steel segment is: our ideas advance steel. Innovations<br />
are urgently needed, if only because of drastic technological<br />
change and associated changes in product requirements, which are<br />
also reducing the lifecycles of our products. This will open up a lot of<br />
new potential over the longer term, which will have to be tapped continually.<br />
In doing this, the focus of our activities will be the customer as<br />
our partner. This is why sales concerns flow into our development work<br />
from a very early stage.<br />
What is the task of the materials researcher within the company?<br />
The researcher is the driver of innovation, but he has to realize one<br />
thing: entrepreneurial activities have to be guided by the market. We try<br />
to give the customer what he wants through a value creation process,<br />
and we have to earn money along the way. It is therefore the customer,
60 INTERVIEW<br />
above all, who decides what we do. Each employee within our company<br />
has to realize this and act accordingly.<br />
Is this approach part of a new corporate culture at <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong>?<br />
Let me point out the decisive difference: in the past, engineers used to<br />
ask first of all what their competence was, and then developed a multitude<br />
of basic materials with numerous characteristics. After that, areas<br />
of application were sought for these materials. Experience shows, however,<br />
that this strategy is less successful than the reverse approach:<br />
First, customer requirements have to be researched and, based on<br />
these findings, existing competencies are combined to develop a specific<br />
solution, at justifiable expense. But I want to stress that our entrepreneurial<br />
activities have to yield a financial result that creates added<br />
value. Our modern production equipment serves above all to generate<br />
profit. Only then will we also be able to create jobs in the long term.<br />
And what about respect for the engineers’ competence?<br />
I’m not questioning their competence. But it is not only the decision<br />
makers within our Group that have to be shaken up. For decades, steel<br />
groups placed far too much emphasis on technology: engineers and<br />
technicians have a very particular mentality, and want to publish the results<br />
of their work with pride. The exchange of information in the relatively<br />
small sector thus knew no limits – everybody knew what everybody<br />
else had developed. We can no longer afford that. We are working<br />
under extremely tough competitive conditions worldwide. It is an art to<br />
remain quiet about real innovation. The most important thing is that we<br />
win customers for our innovative products.<br />
If I understand you correctly, the engineer has to be just as much a<br />
sales agent?<br />
Not necessarily, but I have to be able to expect of engineers that they<br />
never lose sight of the marketability of their innovations. In this regard,<br />
I am guided by traditional entrepreneurial principles. The product-market-profitability-responsibility<br />
relationship focuses on a very small circle<br />
of actors. This circle is rendered anonymous in major corporations. One<br />
person researches, the other produces, yet another sells, and everybody<br />
focuses only on their particular function. Real entrepreneurial interplay<br />
is often lost in the process. This has to change; we have to return<br />
to an understanding of the whole. All those in charge have to think<br />
Technology and basic materials have accompanied Prof. h.c. (CHN) Dr. Ulrich<br />
Middelmann throughout his professional life. Middelmann, 58, who has been<br />
vice chairman of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> AG and chairman of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel AG<br />
since 2001, studied mechanical engineering in Darmstadt and economics in<br />
Aachen. He obtained a doctorate from Bochum’s Ruhr University in 1976 and<br />
an honorary professorship from the University of Tonji in Shanghai in<br />
September 2003. In 1977 he moved to Krupp Stahl AG in Bochum and in 1992<br />
became a member of the executive board of Fried. Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp,<br />
Essen/Dortmund. In the context of the merger of Thyssen AG and Fried. Krupp<br />
AG he was appointed to the executive board of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> AG in 1999.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
homogeneously, with a focus on clearly defined economic and technical<br />
goals.<br />
You are the patron of a material innovation prize, which is awarded by<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> and the Ruhr University in Bochum. Is this an example<br />
of how you want to move material research from the company to the research<br />
departments of universities?<br />
The answer to this question has several aspects. For one, we cooperate<br />
with a series of national and international universities to recruit potential<br />
managers. <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Germany alone employs 8,837 university<br />
graduates, including 6,430 engineers. Since the inclination to<br />
take a technical degree is declining fast among younger generations,<br />
we are working on joint programs with the Ruhr University in Bochum to<br />
convince young people of the attractiveness of the engineering profession.<br />
In addition, we want to identify the most promising students in<br />
these subjects. The material innovation prize is an excellent instrument<br />
to do this. I have been in contact with the relevant staff at the Ruhr University<br />
for years to push ahead with a reform of engineering training.<br />
Aspiring engineers urgently need business skills. As a trained mechanical<br />
engineer who also studied economics, I know what I am talking<br />
about. An additional 20 percent of a degree should be dedicated to<br />
business issues in the future. Graduates should know how a company<br />
works, as well as the meaning of sales, production, procurement of<br />
charges, accounting and much more. They should be able to calculate<br />
and know what project and value management mean. In this way, they<br />
will internalize that their work serves to safeguard and increase the<br />
company’s value in the end.<br />
So the innovation prize helps you find the sought-after engineering recruits<br />
who are so scarce in Germany?<br />
The materials prize is indeed a suitable means of contacting young people<br />
who are of interest to our company. In any case, we don’t primarily<br />
look for these people among trained engineers. We need creative employees,<br />
with a feel for technology and business thinking. This prize allows<br />
us to enter into an interactive dialogue with the university at an<br />
early stage.<br />
What happens to the freedom of university research and teaching if you<br />
cooperate with a university?<br />
The freedom of research and teaching is an important function of uni-<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
INTERVIEW 61<br />
versities, which we respect. But empty federal and state coffers mean<br />
that universities can no longer undertake just any research, without a<br />
goal. Public-sector budgets are being cut back, which means that competition<br />
among universities is getting tougher. The universities increasingly<br />
have to subject themselves to a ranking and become as attractive<br />
as possible in order to obtain third-party funds. In short, university staff<br />
have to seek contact with those who can honor their achievements financially.<br />
In this way, research and teaching are being co-financed.<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> AG maintains a lot of cooperation programs with other<br />
universities and schools, and the board members seek direct contact<br />
with these institutions. But aren’t these rather insufficient attempts for a<br />
high-technology company to find suitable employees, who – starting in<br />
the schools – are increasingly hard to find?<br />
I agree that the entire climate has to change. The environment looks very<br />
bleak. Students are less and less fascinated by technology. Young people<br />
rarely learn mathematics because they claim not to understand it.<br />
Even greater is the fear of getting an engineering degree, which means<br />
dealing in depth with mathematics, physics, mechanics, thermodynamics<br />
and chemistry. This skeptical attitude toward technology is reinforced<br />
by deteriorating political parameters. Various planned laws thus limit the<br />
scope or even threaten energy-intensive businesses in Germany. Meanwhile,<br />
politicians are concealing the fact that the processing industry will<br />
logically follow this departure in a cycle of seven to 10 years. I have the<br />
impression that the debate is being dominated by lawyers and sociologists.<br />
But no economy can stay above water with them and their concepts.<br />
How about a bit of optimism?<br />
As a realist, I analyze the facts first of all, and they don’t bode well for<br />
Germany’s technological development. But an entrepreneur also has to<br />
be optimistic. It is a hopeful sign that the federal government has declared<br />
2004 to be the Year of Technology. <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> is contributing<br />
particularly actively to the various activities initiated by Federal Research<br />
and Education Minister Edelgard Bulmahn. We have to keep lobbying<br />
on behalf of technology and innovation. We have to show young<br />
people that dealing with basic materials demands creativity, manual<br />
skills and in-depth technological know-how, and that working on solutions<br />
for technical problems yields a high level of personal and professional<br />
satisfaction.<br />
The interview was conducted by Heribert Klein<br />
Researchers are the drivers of innovation
62 EDWARD G. BUDD
An entrepreneur with a vision<br />
By Carsten Knop | Photos Hagley Museum and Library<br />
He became famous for<br />
a ground-breaking invention:<br />
at the beginning of the last<br />
century, Edward G. Budd<br />
replaced conventional production<br />
materials with more modern<br />
materials. He became the father<br />
of the all-steel car body in the<br />
United States<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
Today he is listed in the Automotive Hall of Fame because of his<br />
achievements on behalf of the industry in the United States. But<br />
there were times when it was far from certain that Edward G. Budd<br />
would go down as a business success story.<br />
No corporate executive likes reading headlines such as “Pioneer<br />
without profit” about himself, but that is what Fortune wrote about Budd<br />
in February 1937. The business magazine’s editors had obtained the<br />
accounts of the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co. and calculated that<br />
this steel processor and supplier to the automotive industry had lost a<br />
total of $3.3 million over the previous 11 years.<br />
That did not read well, but those who were put off by the discouraging<br />
headline and did not read on missed the description of an<br />
interesting milestone on a long road to success. For Budd, who was indeed<br />
for some years a pioneer without profits, had consciously accepted<br />
the losses in true entrepreneurial spirit. He wanted to pull his<br />
company out of the Depression with the help of new products; it took<br />
longer than expected, but it secured the jobs of thousands of employees<br />
in difficult times.<br />
AN INVENTOR WHO FOLLOWED HIS OWN APPROACH<br />
Times have changed. Today, the headline in a comparable situation<br />
would probably describe a “visionary entrepreneur” and talk about a<br />
courageous business founder who had turned something like a garage<br />
shop into a global player. One thing that has not changed since then,<br />
however, is that entrepreneurs still need capital providers who do not<br />
fear calculated risk. Budd found himself in this fortunate situation,<br />
being helped by New York’s Ladenburg Bank to restore his balance<br />
sheet after the company came under severe financial pressure during<br />
the especially grim days of 1934.<br />
In the previous two decades, Budd had expended considerable<br />
energy in convincing the automotive industry that an all-steel body was<br />
EDWARD G. BUDD 63<br />
From modest beginnings,<br />
Budd and his company rose<br />
to become a provider of topnotch<br />
stainless steel<br />
railroad passenger cars, among<br />
other products. Budd’s new<br />
train cars cut the travel time<br />
between Chicago and Denver<br />
by a full 10 hours.
EDWARD G. BUDD 65<br />
superior to a wooden one in every respect, and now he had fresh capital<br />
to show the advantages of stainless steel carriages for railroads.<br />
Throughout his entire professional life, Budd was a stubborn advocate<br />
of replacing traditional materials with modern ones, but several years of<br />
training and working for other companies had shown that if he wanted<br />
to follow his own approach he would need his own company.<br />
When Fortune wrote the 1934 report, the Budd company was<br />
more than two decades old, Budd – who did not attend a college or<br />
university – having founded it in 1912 with $250,000. Even then that<br />
was not a large amount for a capital-intensive business, and when his<br />
first press would not fit into his one-story factory building Budd could<br />
not afford to rent new premises and had to move the machine into a<br />
circus tent.<br />
WOOD THAT HAD TO GIVE WAY TO STEEL<br />
Yet despite his shortage of cash, Budd had managed to lure away the<br />
best brains from his previous employer, Hale & Kilburn, to brave the<br />
new beginning together with him. This applied in particular to the engineer<br />
Joseph Ledwinka, who came from Vienna and whose inventions<br />
became indispensable to Budd.<br />
Budd also had contacts with the automotive industry that helped<br />
open doors. The first customer to buy the young company’s all-steel<br />
body was Charles Nash, who headed carmaker General Motors, al-<br />
The potential offered by<br />
the new material – steel – was<br />
little recognized in the beginning,<br />
and the first all-steel car bodies<br />
were still strongly influenced<br />
by their wooden forerunners.<br />
Even revolutions take time.<br />
With steel to success
66 EDWARD G. BUDD<br />
though Budd’s real breakthrough came with an order from John and<br />
Horace Dodge, former parts suppliers to Henry Ford who had set up<br />
their own car manufacturing operation in 1914. The Dodge brothers<br />
had heard a lot about the all-steel bodies from Philadelphia over the<br />
previous two years, and were also impressed that they cost $10 less<br />
than the wooden ones then being used. They ordered 5,000 of the allsteel<br />
bodies, which necessitated a move for Budd out of the circus<br />
tent; a year later, the Dodges ordered more than 50,000 bodies from<br />
him. His workforce, just 800 two years before, more than doubled to<br />
2,000, bringing production to a body per minute. With the help of new<br />
welding machines, this rate would soon be raised to two sets per<br />
minute.<br />
The growth continued apace, and just under a decade later the<br />
Budd operation was turning out millions of car bodies for customers<br />
who by now included Ford, Chrysler and Studebaker.<br />
Budd, meanwhile, remained popular among his employees, and<br />
not only because he had secured their jobs: the entrepreneur, who had<br />
grown up in a small town and had started as a trainee in a machinery<br />
business at the age of 17, was accessible, spent more time on the shop<br />
floor than in the office, and knew most of his employees personally.<br />
Shortly after the company was founded, in the midst of World War I, he<br />
gave his employees free life insurance policies, set up a clinic staffed<br />
with a doctor inside the plant, and paid female employees as much as<br />
the men. From the day of the company’s founding, in fact, his employees<br />
shared in its success: Budd understood the concept of sustained<br />
employee motivation better than most of his contemporaries.<br />
And Budd was successful. Most of his potential customers had<br />
grown through the construction of carriages, most of which were made<br />
Edward G. Budd’s factories<br />
were always considered<br />
progressive, as is highlighted<br />
by Budd’s more than 100<br />
patents in automotive and<br />
railroad construction.<br />
One car body<br />
per minute<br />
from wood. Although Budd possessed enough patents to ensure that<br />
no carmaker would be able to press all-steel bodies for several decades<br />
without a license from his company, he was more interested in convincing<br />
the world of the value of his concept than enforcing his copyright<br />
by slowing the triumphal procession of what he saw as the ultimate<br />
progressive material – steel.<br />
While shunning the glamorous life and high-profile public appearances<br />
for himself, Budd liked spectacular advertising campaigns: occasionally<br />
he would arrange to have a car using one of his all-steel bodies<br />
plunged over a cliff, and then challenge his competitors to do the<br />
same with a car using one of their all-wood bodies. Even an elephant<br />
was engaged to prove the stability of a Budd steel roof.<br />
AN ENTREPRENEUR WHO DARED ENTER EUROPE<br />
Budd was also daring when it came to the rapid expansion of his company’s<br />
business activities – indeed, he was too early in venturing to<br />
build his own plant in Detroit, the center of the U.S. automotive industry.<br />
He was drawn to Europe as early as 1924; Citroën showed<br />
great interest in his products, and in this way the Ambi-Budd Presswerk<br />
GmbH was created in Berlin, which in subsequent years became<br />
a supplier to Frankfurt’s Adler-Werke, in which Ambi-Budd held a<br />
stake, as well as to Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Until the<br />
Berlin plant was destroyed in a bomb raid shortly before the end of<br />
World War II, a jeep-style Volkswagen had an Ambi-Budd steel body.<br />
By then, of course, the German company was no longer related to the<br />
U.S. parent.<br />
But the expansion into Europe meant that when the Depression<br />
hit, the simultaneous downswing on both sides of the Atlantic hit Budd<br />
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TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
EDWARD G. BUDD 67<br />
with a double whammy. Suddenly, the company found itself in the midst<br />
of those 11 loss-making years that the Fortune journalists would add up<br />
so accurately in 1937. Yet Budd persevered, and in 1934 he not only<br />
managed to resolve his problems with the banks but saw the entry into<br />
service of the first train made exclusively from stainless steel – the<br />
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy line’s legendary Zephyr. This aerodynamic,<br />
silver train captivated both experts and the riding public with its<br />
low weight, superior stability, a General Motors diesel engine, newly developed<br />
seats and new lighting, and it became a great success despite<br />
the economic crisis, prompting numerous railroad companies to order<br />
similar trains. The welding method for stainless steel, developed by the<br />
Budd engineers, was considered revolutionary.<br />
At the time, Budd was criticized for the high expense of building<br />
these state-of-the-art trains, to which he replied, “I’m not interested in<br />
the costs; it’s the value and benefit that count. After all, we also use diamonds<br />
to cut steel.” Still, it took this “pioneer without profits” some<br />
time to prove that trains with such evocative names as Super Chief,<br />
Champion, Flying Yankee, Silver Meteor, Empire State Express and El<br />
Capitan could be built at a profit by the Budd Manufacturing Company.<br />
With the onset of World War II, there was no longer any need for<br />
Budd to worry about the capacity use of his plants; as during World War<br />
I, the company was engaged in armaments production. He survived the<br />
war, but died in 1946 at the age of 75. His son, Edward G. Budd Jr.,<br />
then took over the company management.<br />
In 1985, Edward Budd Sr., the pioneer of the all-steel car body,<br />
joined the grandest names in U.S. automotive history when he was<br />
posthumously elected to the Automotive Hall of Fame in the Detroit<br />
suburb of Dearborn. 7
68 GALLARDO<br />
The design is the guiding<br />
factor: Luc Donckerwolke, the<br />
designer of the Lamborghini<br />
Gallardo, created a sculpture<br />
on wheels,and <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong><br />
Drauz has brought it to life<br />
with an aluminum body. It<br />
receives all sorts of refinements<br />
at the plant in Sant’ Agata.<br />
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TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
GALLARDO 69<br />
By Rüdiger Abele | Photos <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Drauz, Lamborghini<br />
Take 384 aluminum sheet, extrusion and cast parts, 864 punch rivets,<br />
and 181 screws. Then shoot the rivets into the light metal at<br />
the right position, draw 115 meters of welding seam, pull the<br />
screws tight at the right place, add glue where needed, and voila: the<br />
body in white of a Lamborghini Gallardo.<br />
Of course it’s not really that easy – aluminum processing is a<br />
complex affair. Yet <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Drauz GmbH, in the southern German<br />
city of Heilbronn, has gathered so much expertise in car body manufacturing<br />
during its long corporate history that Lamborghini entrusted it<br />
with the complete production of the body in white for this very fast car.<br />
And why not? Drauz has already cooperated in the manufacturing<br />
of the aluminum bodies for Audi’s A2 and A8 models, and the ultimate<br />
proof of the quality that Drauz produces is proved by the fact that its artful<br />
constructs for Lamborghini are ready to go straight into the ultramodern<br />
paint plant at Audi.<br />
TASTY INGREDIENTS FOR AN AUTOMOTIVE DELICACY<br />
Before we go into the production details, though, let us take a look at<br />
the finished product: the Lamborghini Gallardo is a very high-performance<br />
sports car, just 1.16 meters high, a vehicle whose look alone<br />
tells you that this is a car that is meant to go very fast.<br />
But let us consider its technical data, anyway, since it is a rather<br />
tasty ingredient in this automotive delicacy: the engine yields an imposing<br />
500 horsepower (368 kW) from 10 cylinders with altogether 5.0<br />
liters cubic capacity, which take this roughly 1,600-kilogram sports car<br />
A lightly dressed<br />
Italian sports car<br />
built for speed<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Drauz manufactures<br />
the aluminum body in white<br />
for the breathtaking Lamborghini Gallardo
70 GALLARDO<br />
The Lamborghini initially<br />
starts moving on a plain carriage.<br />
The car body shell is made up<br />
of nearly 400 aluminum parts that<br />
are assembled with screws, punch<br />
rivets, welding seams and glue.<br />
to 100 km/h in a breathtaking 4.2 seconds. Top speed is above 300<br />
km/h. Any more questions?<br />
Perhaps about the design, because the shape of the car’s body<br />
naturally has a significant impact on the way it is produced, as shown<br />
clearly at <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Drauz. Lamborghini’s Belgian designer, Luc<br />
Donckerwolke, created the Gallardo as a sculpture on wheels – and was<br />
clearly very conscious of this mission. The body mirrors great artistic<br />
freedom, which presents the manufacturers with numerous challenges:<br />
it is not practical and even like that of mass cars, but exalted and extravagant,<br />
with sharp lines and racy cavities. Che bella macchina!<br />
TOP QUALITY IS TAKEN FOR GRANTED<br />
It is hardly surprising, then, that 95 percent of the Gallardo body in<br />
white is produced manually, particularly because it is produced in only<br />
relatively small numbers. About 100 employees busy themselves in<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Drauz’s bright, spotlessly clean plant, getting the aluminum<br />
into its racy final shape. In addition, two robots carry out special<br />
tasks. The motto: to produce top quality. This is why employees receive<br />
nearly a year and a half of special training and the machines need the<br />
same amount of time to be set up and adjusted: aluminum has its own<br />
particularities and, in many respects, cannot be compared to steel.<br />
Some employees who learned their craft in steel body manufacturing<br />
had to make big adjustments.<br />
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TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
The motto is precision<br />
Just a look at the<br />
drawings is enough to see<br />
that <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Drauz<br />
faced a great fabrication<br />
challenge. The finishing of<br />
the Lamborghini Gallardo<br />
body also requires a lot<br />
of handwork.<br />
GALLARDO 71
72 GALLARDO<br />
An exquisite aluminum dress<br />
The body is assembled part by part, being welded only if it is absolutely<br />
necessary. This joining procedure is difficult with aluminum: for<br />
one thing, the object always has to be placed in such a way that the<br />
seam can be reached – which is why <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Drauz has several<br />
custom-made rotating devices to bring the different parts into the right<br />
position. In addition, the excellent heat-conducting properties of the<br />
light metal diffuse the strong heat that develops throughout the material,<br />
causing it to stretch – and occasionally not return to its original<br />
shape after it has cooled down. But this must not happen, given the tolerances<br />
of one millimeter within the entire Gallardo frame and just twotenths<br />
of a millimeter for visible parts, for example the gap between<br />
door and frame. This is why the engineers have to consider aluminum’s<br />
special material characteristics when determining how the parts will be<br />
put together. Rivets, for example, do not produce heat distortion, and<br />
so are used wherever possible; the same with screws – which is why the<br />
Lamborghini Gallardo carries so many of them in invisible places. The<br />
mechanic uses a manual device or other equipment to press the punch<br />
rivets into the right combination to hold the material securely together;<br />
a loud pop sound can be heard – the rivet is in place, and the next is<br />
placed in the right spot. Many such pops create a wonderfully dotted<br />
line, which makes for a high level of solidity.<br />
The lower frame of the Lamborghini Gallardo is made first, either<br />
welded or riveted, depending on the construction requirements. It<br />
consists of three sections: front end and back end are attached to the<br />
floor, in the step that makes it apparent to the human eye for the first<br />
Luc Donckerwolke,<br />
who designed the Gallardo<br />
for Lamborghini, has<br />
realized a vision by using corners,<br />
edges and cuts to create<br />
style combined with function:<br />
robots and sensors ensure<br />
that the car body shell<br />
receives its ultimate shape.<br />
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time that it is a car that is being created here. A wonderful example of<br />
how the engineers pay heed to the material characteristics of aluminum<br />
are the flow drill screws, which fix the floor sheets and are<br />
handled by one of the two robots: an automatic screwdriver is attached<br />
to its arm, and air pressure turns the screw securely into<br />
place. It lets its top rotate on the sheet, which does not have any pilot<br />
holes, creating temperatures of about 200 degrees Centigrade. As a<br />
result, the aluminum softens, the screw enters the sheet, furrows into<br />
the screw thread, and the electronic control system provides a torque<br />
of exactly seven Newton-meters.<br />
THE CAR BODY SHELL IS CHECKED PAINSTAKINGLY<br />
The sheet metal specialists attach the car body shell to the frame: fender<br />
by fender, panel by panel, the Lamborghini’s racy silhouette becomes<br />
visible. Once again, a lot of riveting is carried out, but welding<br />
torches also light their splicing fire on the light metal. Whatever seam it<br />
leaves behind is initially filed away, and body specialists ensure the final<br />
polish: Even the tiniest unevenness is sanded down; expert grinders<br />
feel the surface carefully with their gloved hands and then use their<br />
tools to remove miniscule amounts of excess aluminum. At last, a totally<br />
even surface can be seen where only a short time before the seam<br />
was still clearly visible.<br />
After all these production steps, each body in white is checked<br />
to ensure that all measurements are in line with Lamborghini’s specifications,<br />
and to this end the future sports car is briefly lifted up and<br />
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The Lamborghini Gallardo<br />
is an undisputed star<br />
on the streets and stradas<br />
of this world. Five-hundred<br />
horse power propel it to<br />
100 km/h within just four<br />
seconds; its lightweight<br />
body helps, of course.<br />
GALLARDO 73<br />
fitted into the “teaching vehicle,” which meets the exact measurements.<br />
Any deviations are adjusted – though this is rarely necessary<br />
at this stage. Testing of the bodies becomes more sophisticated all<br />
the time; already, a sophisticated sensor spends four hours feeling<br />
thousands of points and comparing them to the computer data in the<br />
measuring space.<br />
But the Lamborghini torso is not yet complete: next stop is the finishing<br />
process, where the body is polished to absolute evenness with a<br />
very fine abrasive in a separate room with optimal lighting and a fine<br />
dust extraction system. The people working here are at the very top of<br />
their field, since not everyone can develop the sensitivity and visual<br />
judgement necessary to determine where another trace of metal has to<br />
be removed or where another very slight tap with a hammer is needed<br />
to obtain the perfect surface. And one learns that “even” is sometimes<br />
not even enough, for the first painting mercilessly exposes even the<br />
smallest unevenness.<br />
Confident at last that everything has been done so that another<br />
Gallardo body will meet this exacting test, <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Drauz ships<br />
it to the paint shop at Audi, from where it will travel to a factory in<br />
Sant’Agata in Italy. There, the Gallardo is fitted with its powerful motor<br />
and everything else that is needed to make a true Italian sports car –<br />
a vehicle that can perform brilliantly on the streets and stradas of this<br />
world and look great doing it. A product of top technology and superior<br />
craftsmanship all packed inside a visually stunning, aluminum<br />
body. 7
74 RINK ‘GLASS’<br />
Ice hockey is the fastest, and one of the<br />
toughest, team sports in the world.<br />
For fans, watching a game from the front<br />
row is the greatest experience of all<br />
By Benedikt Breith | Photos Andreas Möltgen<br />
A shield that lets<br />
through the emotions<br />
It’s the speed that excites – speed that at times seems beyond human<br />
capability. Just as exciting, however, is the danger – a danger that<br />
people seek out, knowing they are safe. We’re talking about ice<br />
hockey rinks and one particular rink, specifically the Düsseldorf Eislauf<br />
Gesellschaft (DEG) stadium, which has been known for decades for the<br />
lively atmosphere created by the local team’s fans, whose creativity,<br />
sayings, songs and heartfelt but restrained emotions are legendary.<br />
With good reason: in this stadium, fans and players are very close to<br />
each other. Close in a game whose speed is fascinating but also creates<br />
the greatest potential danger.<br />
PLASTIC PROTECTION FOR THE AUDIENCE<br />
After all, the puck, which is a kind of stone of the wise in ice hockey, deciding<br />
triumph and disappointment, reaches a speed of 180 kilometers<br />
per hour. If a person is hit by such a shot – traveling 50 meters every<br />
second – it could be fatal. Therefore, preventive measures are taken at<br />
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the DEG stadium, and <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Services was called in, and recently<br />
delivered a state-of-the-art protective shield over the boards that<br />
surround the ice surface; known as “the glass,” it is, of course, actually<br />
made of completely transparent plastic. Still, that is not a material<br />
usually associated with the name <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong>. “As a trade organization,<br />
our range of products comprises a broad variety of materials,” explains<br />
Werner Eschbach, managing board member of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong><br />
Schulte GmbH, a subsidiary of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Services. An expert who<br />
has been in the business for more than 25 years, he is responsible for<br />
the plastics division.<br />
“You have to be excited about the material you sell,” is his motto.<br />
“That’s the only way to be successful in the plastics market, which has<br />
been shaped by medium-sized businesses.”<br />
The order from the DEG certainly will not do much to increase<br />
overall sales in plastics trading (an area in which <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Services<br />
is the world market leader), but it is a good reference project that<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
The Margard ® product is<br />
stronger than glass. No matter<br />
how hard the puck hits it, the<br />
fans behind it are safe – so they<br />
can follow the fast and exciting<br />
game of ice hockey without fear<br />
of injury. And with unbridled<br />
enthusiasm.<br />
RINK ‘GLASS’ 75<br />
convinces potential customers. The “Margard ® ” polycarbonate sheets<br />
can live up to the demands of puck security, transparency and translucency,<br />
and that isn’t just an advertising statement, but the result of extreme<br />
tests. A test certificate lists exactly what the transparent material<br />
had to stand up to: the puck was shot at the polycarbonate material 30<br />
times at a 90-degree angle, and another 24 times at a 45-degree<br />
angle, at a speed of 50 meters per second.<br />
A SHIELD WITH STRONG PUCK SECURITY<br />
But that’s not all, as the test certificate attests: “24 hours before the<br />
test, the glass element was put in a climate chamber and cooled down<br />
to 0 degrees centigrade, since such temperatures are the norm in ice<br />
sport arenas at ground level and have a decisive influence on the<br />
toughness of the glass.” The result: “No changes to the barrier. The<br />
tested barrier withstood use without damage. It is thus proven to be<br />
puck-secure, in accordance with the test conditions detailed above.”
76 RINK ‘GLASS’<br />
The testing completed, it was possible to give fans sitting behind<br />
the glass in Düsseldorf new transparency and a high degree of security,<br />
leaving them free to enjoy an unforgettable sporting experience: they<br />
feel so close as to be almost a part of the action, separated from the<br />
players by only a thin, transparent band, and with a lively cacophony of<br />
sound from punchy music and an excited, roaring crowd all around<br />
them. The pucks that slam up hard against the glass – the vulcanized<br />
rubber disks appear to be headed directly for the fans, only to bounce<br />
harmlessly back into play – only add to the excitement. And it’s all<br />
thanks to polycarbonate sheets.<br />
TRANSLUCENT BEAUTY IN AN ICE-COLD ENVIRONMENT<br />
Do the technical details interest the fans? Probably not much. But as in<br />
real life, creating transparency is a lot of work, and Eschbach takes a<br />
very basic approach: “We are service providers and put ourselves in the<br />
customers’ shoes to find out what they need. That’s what we deliver.”<br />
The puck remains safely on the ice<br />
Eschbach mentions a whole range of products, which have to do with<br />
another material that is just as important to him – acrylic, with its wonderful<br />
aesthetics that can be praised to the heavens. Luxury furniture<br />
made of acrylic, highly creative art works made of Plexiglas ® , “transparent<br />
objects of beauty” called light sculptures, in which light and<br />
Plexiglas ® meet and communicate. “The Plexiglas ® brand signals reliability,<br />
quality and innovation,” and ideally complements polycarbonate,<br />
Eschbach concludes. Polycarbonate was manufactured for the first time<br />
in 1953 by the Bayer scientist H. Schell and was already being mass<br />
produced in 1958. D.W. Fox discovered Polycarbonate for General Electric.<br />
The applications are unlimited: as roofing for greenhouses, as a<br />
material for futuristic bathtubs, barrel vaulting, protective shields and<br />
visors, and as automotive glass and protective machine guards.<br />
Compared with some of these applications, the barrier in Düsseldorf’s<br />
DEG stadium appears relatively simple, but it is not only about<br />
using plastics in aerospace or aircraft technology or some of the other<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
exotic applications that Eschbach describes. What is needed are barriers<br />
that divide and unite at the same time. Protective barriers that let<br />
through light and images – and emotion – thanks to true transparency,<br />
but at the same time protect people – like hockey fans – from dangers<br />
on the other side. The results would be fatal if a puck hit a fan.<br />
TRANSPARENCY IS IN FASHION<br />
But let’s not forget the far-reaching thermal applications, which for polycarbonate<br />
start at minus 40 centigrade and end at 115 centigrade, or<br />
the very good processing conditions: what’s known as the “semi-finished<br />
product” out of PC (this includes the material of the ice hockey<br />
rink “glass”) can be bent cold and formed warm, beveled, sawed,<br />
drilled, milled, nailed and screwed cold and warm without splitting. In<br />
addition, it is durable against chemicals, gas, oils and non-aromatic<br />
fats. Werner Eschbach does not hide his excitement about this material.<br />
The plastics business is part of a growth market, he notes from his<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
The demands placed on<br />
the rink “glass” are high. It has<br />
to act as a protective wall,<br />
yet let the enthusiastic fans live<br />
their emotions. The polycarbonate<br />
sheets were tested under the<br />
tough conditions that reign<br />
in the hockey arena – and then<br />
approved for installation.<br />
RINK ‘GLASS’ 77<br />
perspective of a service provider. “We are very well positioned; our<br />
added value is above average. We are working on a multi-brand strategy,<br />
within which we are geared toward medium-sized businesses.”<br />
Making things transparent is the trend, and this is especially true of<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong>, which has intentionally become a leader in transparency<br />
(in corporate governance). Eschbach, of course, would not make this comparison,<br />
but he finds the parallels interesting. The new and highly transparent<br />
glass in the DEG stadium is a great example of how interesting orders<br />
with a broad public impact are acquired by <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Schulte.<br />
By the way, none of this had any impact on the outcome of the<br />
game: in the 156th Rhine Derby, the visiting Cologne Sharks beat the<br />
host DEG Metro Stars 3-0. In his heart of hearts, Werner Eschbach, who<br />
works in Düsseldorf but comes from Cologne, may have been happy,<br />
but he was diplomatic enough to keep it to himself. For him, there was<br />
a more important result: 10,000 fans saw the game, entertained and at<br />
times transfixed, and always in complete safety. 7
78 MATERIALS SELECTION
Metal materials<br />
– and the man<br />
who knows<br />
all about them<br />
By Heribert Klein | Photos Claudia Kempf<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
MATERIALS SELECTION 79<br />
Jochen Adams has an important role at<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Schulte: he is known as the<br />
inventor of a materials selection program – the<br />
ideal database for customers to find the right<br />
material in the shortest possible time<br />
Jochen Adams does not leave the slightest doubt as to what he<br />
does, or what exact functions he performs. According to his business<br />
card, he is “Head of Central Technical Sales/Quality Management”<br />
at <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Schulte, one of the companies in the<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Services group. The title sounds more unwieldy than<br />
Adams appears, for this title conceals a man whose entire professional<br />
life has been molded by his expertise, interest and passion for metallic<br />
materials.<br />
“There is a lot to do here,” he says, sitting in his office, which is<br />
filled to overflowing with records, papers and files. He thinks of thousands<br />
of questions that lead to further questions on every topic in materials<br />
science. This company officer with statutory authority named<br />
Adams appears to be a walking encyclopedia, a person who knows<br />
quite well how to use a computer, but equally adheres steadfastly to the<br />
principle: “You have to read a lot in order to know where to find something.”<br />
This is all done in the interests of being a service provider for<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Schulte’s branches in all questions pertaining to metallic<br />
materials.<br />
A DATABASE IS INITIALLY CREATED IN THE HEAD<br />
Adams, who holds a degree in engineering, is the “inventor” and operator<br />
of a practice-oriented materials selection program. This involves a<br />
database that meantime appears to have attained gigantic proportions,<br />
based on which Adams can provide each customer with the type of<br />
steel which fits his or her requirements exactly. “We have taken every<br />
type of steel and analyzed its properties. However, the tolerance limits<br />
of a norm were not the decisive factor for us, but rather the realistic data<br />
from our calculations. In this respect we have results that we can pass<br />
on to our customers that really have been measured.” He prides himself<br />
in the fact that he knows what he is talking about when he gives advice.<br />
Originally, he is a metallographer. He began working at Thyssen<br />
Röhrenwerke in 1967, moving to the heavy plate mill in south Duisburg<br />
in the area of quality control in 1970. “You have to have a lot of luck in<br />
your life to achieve success,” he emphasizes. To name just one example,<br />
the fact that he discovered a pile of test result sheets for various<br />
steels in which no one barring himself appeared to be interested in the
80 MATERIALS SELECTION<br />
Sights set on the customer<br />
Jochen Adams has analyzed<br />
and then stored on a computer<br />
database the characteristics<br />
of every steel. This data<br />
is invaluable to the customers<br />
who purchase it.
MATERIALS SELECTION 81
82 MATERIALS SELECTION<br />
Searching for the optimum solution<br />
heavy plate mill was such a stroke of luck. Adams took the trouble to<br />
study everything he saw, everything that crossed his path, and calculate<br />
figures and compare the results – and then record all these facts<br />
gradually in a database. His life experience, however, has taught him to<br />
exploit all the benefits of computer technology without running the risk<br />
of overrating them. He would be unable to do that: “The computer cannot<br />
replace everything, but one cannot replace the computer completely<br />
either.”<br />
He demonstrates how this works in practice with the passion that<br />
is typical for him. He often stands up in the middle of the interview,<br />
rushes to one of his cupboards, the contents of which – hardly comprehensible<br />
for an external observer – he appears to know page for<br />
page, and pulls out a file purposefully. In Adams’ case, the comment,<br />
“I can show you everything in black and white,” is no coquetry, but an<br />
expression of the seriousness of his intent – which he knows how to use<br />
when disputes arise in such a way that his reference to one or other<br />
passage in the technical literature almost always puts and end to the argument.<br />
“Such experience is particularly useful in the event of arguments,”<br />
he says, “provided that one has read all the technical reports<br />
and knows exactly where to find every detail.”<br />
DETAILED KNOWLEDGE PUTS AN END TO ARGUMENTS<br />
Normally, customers come to Jochen Adams looking for the ideal steel<br />
solution. With today’s possibilities, he can serve them promptly. Assuming<br />
that a commercial vehicle manufacturer is looking for a heat<br />
treatment diagram, and determines all possible properties such as<br />
hardening ability, yield point, fold radius, welding ability, sheet thickness<br />
– then he can present them with one or a selection of suitable<br />
types within seconds with the aid of his computer, which – generally one<br />
of the most important aspects – is also actually available. “What use is<br />
the most beautiful steel if I cannot deliver it to the customer?” asks<br />
Adams, this time in the role of trader, beyond the function of metallurgist.<br />
Yet, if he finds a result in his computer for all parameters, Adams’<br />
expression brightens. “Bull’s eye!” This is not insignificant, as it leads<br />
to new turnover for <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Schulte, and Adams is once again<br />
contributing to the company’s prosperity in his own way.<br />
Is this a boring job? Not at all, says Adams, there has not been<br />
one day in his long career on which he did not want to go in to work, not<br />
least because there are continually new challenges, he says.<br />
INDICATIONS ARE IN LINE WITH EXPERIENCE<br />
Then he becomes even livelier than usual. “I seek application-oriented<br />
solutions together with the customer. This has nothing to do with research,<br />
however.” Nonetheless, the distinctions are blurred between<br />
the two. If he mentions the materials “TS-ThermoCut 1 and TS-ThermoCut<br />
2,” it quickly becomes clear that he can (also) be termed an inventor<br />
with a clear conscience in this area too, for he developed these<br />
two types of steel for thermal extraction processes – especially laser<br />
cutting. Moreover, the colored brochure which describes the properties<br />
of these new inventions mirrors Adams’ personal expertise and standards,<br />
not just with regard to the details, the clearly portrayed information<br />
about the chemical composition, thermal extraction processes,<br />
laser-beam cutting, laser-beam welding or cold forming. The statement:<br />
“The information with which we wish to advise you corresponds<br />
to our experience” could be a direct quote from him.<br />
Jochen Adams has long taken a particular interest in problem<br />
cases related to materials. Being pragmatic by nature on the basis of<br />
secure knowledge, he takes one or other object, places it on the table<br />
and explains where the actual and not the putative problem lies. The vehicle<br />
manufacturer, for instance, who does not fold using the stipulated<br />
radius of 10 millimeters, but only with 1 millimeter, at which point the<br />
edge breaks: “That will never work.” Then there is the maker of a machine<br />
which vacuum-packs meat: The machine is rusting in every imaginable<br />
place, and the manufacturer and operator of the machine claims<br />
to know with certainty that this is caused by the wrong materials. However,<br />
Adams knows with even more certainty that it is caused by the<br />
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Jochen Adams<br />
is a pragmatic man who has<br />
worked with steel throughout<br />
his studies and his career.<br />
The materials selection<br />
program he developed<br />
serves only one purpose:<br />
helping the customer.<br />
cleaning agents with which the machine works and which are not rinsed<br />
off completely – and thus have an abrasive effect on the metal.<br />
In another example, someone produces a pressure vessel for domestic<br />
gas lines, and bores a steel round for this purpose. In the telling,<br />
his voice goes up a register, his relaxed demeanor has vanished, and<br />
one can only hear words like “incredible mistakes, quite the catastrophe.”<br />
“Why? A pressure vessel is built from steel rounds by boring it. I<br />
told them that would not work, because the interiors of steel rounds of<br />
this thickness are not always gastight and therefore gas can escape. Incredible!”<br />
However, how many people like to admit their mistakes? No one<br />
does, according to Adams’ long years of experience. Therefore, he laid<br />
the basis all the more persistently for locating mistakes where they arise<br />
– wherever this may be, and even if it is in his own company. Adams is<br />
a much too honest practitioner of his craft to keep the truth to himself.<br />
After all, a considerable portion of his career success lies in the fact that<br />
he has developed and built up a system that serves both to detect errors<br />
and to avoid mistakes.<br />
EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE TO BE SHARED<br />
Whenever he retires, who will take over this legacy of his intensive professional<br />
life? He holds out great hopes for three of the technicians<br />
who work with him and are set to follow in his footsteps. Everything augurs<br />
well for this at the moment, for Adams will pass on all the expertise<br />
he has gained. So far, so good. However, a residual insecurity remains.<br />
Everyone must gather experience for himself or herself, and<br />
experience is an intrinsic component of Adams’ materials selection<br />
program for ordinary, alloyed and high-alloy steel. It is hardly imaginable<br />
that someone (like Adams) at some stage would no longer be able<br />
to say: “Read up in this passage in the technical literature from 1968,<br />
or in this text from 1978, or read the materials specification sheet from<br />
1989.” There is no question that Jochen Adams will be sorely needed<br />
for some time to come. 7<br />
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MATERIALS SELECTION 83<br />
THE MATERIALS SELECTION PROGRAM AT A GLANCE<br />
In line with the individual user’s respective requirements,<br />
the program recommends the suitable material for the relevant<br />
application.<br />
Finding the right material in three steps:<br />
1. Select the sector<br />
2. Identify the characteristics<br />
3. Define specifications<br />
The sector selection is followed by the indication of up to three<br />
pre-selected characteristics, which are particularly relevant for<br />
this sector. The user can confirm these characteristics or select<br />
new ones. The necessary specifications for each characteristic<br />
can then be determined precisely. During the selection<br />
process, the program also checks the required availability of<br />
the production material.<br />
Precise selection possibilities<br />
Characteristics are divided into 37 categories, such as vibration<br />
strength, cold-forming properties, heat conductivity,<br />
weather resistance, rolling properties, yield strength, tensile<br />
strength, elongation after fracture, weldability, bend radius,<br />
elasticity moduling and surface treatability etc.<br />
Each of these characteristics can be indicated through a precise<br />
value; to this end, up to 50 specifications per characteristic<br />
are laid out.<br />
Comprehensive contents<br />
The program database contains about 500 steels, including<br />
the 32 most commonly used high-alloy steels. The data are<br />
based on measured materials analyses – which are also documented<br />
in works products – from steel production. The information<br />
is regularly adjusted and updated to reflect the latest<br />
status of norms and technology.<br />
Materials sheets are available for several steels. For steels that<br />
can be handled warm, time-temperature conversion presentations<br />
are available. As for steel types that can be used in components,<br />
where vibration stress capability is required, stresscycle<br />
diagrams are available that rate the fatigue strength. All<br />
search results as well as the various ZTU presentations on file,<br />
stress-cycle diagrams and material specifications sheets, can<br />
be easily printed out.
84 LASERS
Laser welding requires<br />
special steels with a specific<br />
make-up. Precision engineering<br />
with laser technology is<br />
unrivaled for precision work on<br />
these materials with a sheet<br />
thickness of 3 to 12 millimeters.<br />
By Benedikt Breith | Photos Blohm + Voss<br />
Tolerance is desirable as a quality between different<br />
people and groups, but the goal in this case is to<br />
keep it to a minimum. Why? Because “precision engineering,”<br />
as experts call it, is the goal and the name of<br />
a technology that uses lasers to keep tolerances as low<br />
as possible.<br />
The expert’s name is Alfred Kahl, head of shipbuilding<br />
in Hamburg at Blohm + Voss, a subsidiary of<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Technologies. He is a straightforward engineer<br />
who doesn’t get flowery when the subject turns to<br />
laser technology, yet is unable to resist listing its advantages<br />
down to the last detail. Of course, he realizes that<br />
for many people, laser technology means one Hollywood<br />
sensation or another: wasn’t it used in that James Bond<br />
film? Didn’t Bond use laser beams to destroy airplanes,<br />
and weren’t lasers even being deployed in an attempt to<br />
rule the world?<br />
Kahl keeps his feet on the ground – figuratively<br />
speaking, for he is using laser technology to build ships<br />
that will traverse the world’s oceans safely. This leads us<br />
back to a theme that Kahl enjoys talking about: precision<br />
shipbuilding.<br />
Kahl leads us through an assembly hangar that<br />
demonstrates the huge dimensions of the objects he<br />
works with, which in a sense are in reverse proportion to<br />
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LASERS 85<br />
Perfect precision<br />
thanks to lasers<br />
The quality of Blohm + Voss’s new welding technology<br />
is nothing short of world class<br />
the precise, measured-by-the-millimeter work done by the laser. “What’s relevant for<br />
us when it comes to using lasers is steel plate between three and 12 millimeters,” explains<br />
Kahl. “We don’t use lasers for thicker steel plate."<br />
Precision and size have undergone an amazing symbiosis at Blohm + Voss,<br />
where a vessel 150 meters, or 490 feet, in length is expected to have a maximum joint<br />
gap of 0.3 millimeters. It seems like nothing, and yet it is for deck elements that can<br />
be welded together at a maximum of 12 meters in length and 4 meters in width. Kahl<br />
says that the results make the high-tech equipment worth it.<br />
“The work that goes into straightening alone amounts to around 30,000 hours.<br />
We save around half of that time by using lasers and can immediately begin the next<br />
processing phase without the cumbersome straightening work.”<br />
ARTISTIC LASER TECHNOLOGY FOR DELICATE SEAMS<br />
Standing in front of one of these ships is impressive: a giant yacht or fast cruise ship<br />
is as high as a big house or even an office building, and in principle both are designed<br />
and built with the same goals in mind, namely relative lightness combined with stability,<br />
maneuverability and an ability to move through the water with as little resistance<br />
as possible.<br />
This has a considerable impact on the materials that have to be used. They must<br />
be lightweight, yet extremely tough and very thin.<br />
Looking under the hull of one of these floating wonders, you immediately recognize<br />
the intricate network of watertight compartments and lateral bulkheads that<br />
are connected in a wing assembly, an interwoven set of transverse and longitudinal<br />
division bulkheads that are laid out in a fairly simple design but are complex to produce.<br />
When the two carbon-dioxide lasers do their precision work, lighting up like the
86 LASERS
Laser imprint without tolerance<br />
sun, they achieve a level of precision that cannot be achieved by humans but only by<br />
sensor-controlled machines. Human beings have not become superfluous, but their<br />
function is reduced to controlling the process taking place before their eyes in the<br />
control room.<br />
Kahl offers a technically precise definition: “We use special types of steel with a<br />
specific chemical make-up. The laser’s imprint on these types of steel is highly compromised<br />
in a tiny amount of space.” What that means is that shrinking is hardly noticeable<br />
and that the cooling speed is extremely high; increases in hardness are almost<br />
imperceptible. The highly concentrated laser beam causes a minimal thermal<br />
burden, which also minimizes the warping of the steel sheet.”<br />
Kahl has a plethora of impressive comparisons up his sleeve. Next to each other<br />
are joints and profiles, several of them welded using traditional welding equipment<br />
and the other using laser technology. It is as though one was done by a butcher, the<br />
other by a surgeon. The traditional seam is uneven and rough, the laser-welded seam<br />
delicate and even artistic.<br />
THE STATE-OF-THE-ART FACILITY FOR PRE-ASSEMBLY<br />
So is all of this new? Kahl admits that the shipbuilding industry needed many more<br />
years to implement laser technology than did other sectors, such as automotive production,<br />
which long ago adapted it to its needs. Research institutes and universities<br />
did pioneering development work, and Blohm + Voss took the results and built “what<br />
is currently the state-of-the-art facility for pre-assembly work,” according to Kahl.<br />
“The components of maximum dimensions, 4 x 12 meters, weigh around 9 tons.”<br />
Imagine that the beams weighed 16 tons, and the overlying component parts an<br />
additional 10 tons. The laser facility requires flying optics with a fixed portal and three<br />
moveable work pieces as well as a positioning and a stretching portal. The laser-beam<br />
sources, in contrast, are stationary. Kahl stresses one effect: the quality of welding pro-<br />
I-seam on T-end, then simultaneously<br />
laser-welded – that’s how the profiles end<br />
up on the steel plate. The deep-welding<br />
effect achieves a full attachment between<br />
plates and ribs. “You won’t find a more<br />
stable welding seam,” says Alfred Kahl,<br />
head of shipbuilding at Blohm + Voss.<br />
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LASERS 87<br />
files on coated steel plates. The expert knew immediately:<br />
I-seam on T-end, simultaneously laser welded: that’s what<br />
it’s about, and Kahl produces some pictures and charts<br />
that illustrate the difference compared to conventional fillet<br />
welds. While this method only joins the corners, the lasers<br />
work much more intensely on the materials.<br />
“With the deep-welding effect, we achieve a full attachment<br />
between plates and ribs,” says Kahl. “You won’t<br />
find a more stable welding seam. Germanische Lloyd has<br />
certified this technology for us.”<br />
A surgeon’s precision for products whose surfaces<br />
can cover a whole field – that is the attractiveness of laser<br />
technology in shipbuilding. With this, following Kahl’s<br />
words, lightweight construction has finally made it into the<br />
world of “fast ships.” When you think that each ship can<br />
have 200 kilometers, or about 125 miles, of laser-beam<br />
seams spread across an area of 60,000 square meters,<br />
you can imagine the powerful dimensions. “The laser will<br />
take care of it,” you might be tempted to say. But what<br />
does that mean? Here nothing has to be straightened<br />
warm or with a flame, since angle shrinkage, buckling and<br />
bending are things of the past.<br />
When the laser does its blindingly bright work on the<br />
panels, everything fits to a T. But when it comes to tolerance,<br />
the laser doesn’t give any slack. Because tolerance<br />
and precision production are two things that don’t fit together.<br />
Not one little bit. 7
88 VIM FURNACE<br />
Super alloys of<br />
unrivaled purity<br />
The vacuum induction melting furnace<br />
(VIM) of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> VDM in Unna is the<br />
premier address in Europe for production<br />
materials with extreme characteristics<br />
By Dieter Vogt | Illustrations Tobias Wandres<br />
There are, in fact, more precious objects than the precious metals<br />
that adorn the necks and wrists of women. Very pure alloys, which<br />
are not worn with evening dress, are even more refined and sophisticated.<br />
Most have unknown names and will never be as prominent<br />
as gold or silver, but these high-performance materials fulfill crucial<br />
tasks at critical technological interfaces in equipment including automotive<br />
catalysts, aircraft engines, television sets and flue gas desulfurization<br />
plants.<br />
TWO-HUNDRED-AND-SIXTY CREATIONS ON OFFER<br />
Giesserstrasse (Casters’ Street) and Formerstrasse (Formers’ Street),<br />
two addresses on the outskirts of Unna, reflect the prominence of the<br />
steel industry in the city just east of Dortmund, in Germany’s Rhine-<br />
Ruhr industrial region. From the outside it is impossible to tell that the<br />
blue works halls are Europe’s premier address for special alloys, yet the<br />
Unna smelting plant is <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> VDM GmbH’s specialty kitchen.<br />
Alloys emerge from the fusion of different metals – sometimes two,<br />
sometimes a dozen, with the aim of optimizing some of the elements’<br />
properties or generating entirely new ones. Again and again, the key<br />
demand is that the alloys should withstand mechanical, thermal or<br />
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The Unna plant has only been<br />
operating for a short time.<br />
Under aerospace conditions, the<br />
material is smelted in the furnace.<br />
The vacuum process within the<br />
furnace ensures that the alloys<br />
are free of unwanted impurities.<br />
VIM FURNACE 89
90 VIM FURNACE<br />
chemical strains, and occasionally all three at the same time. The Unna<br />
smelter turns out no fewer than 260 alloys, and with research and development<br />
continuing this number looks certain to increase. Nickel and<br />
cobalt, two heavy metals, are the dominant basic elements.<br />
The Unna plant, which was opened by Vereinigte Deutsche Metallwerke<br />
in 1972, has changed along with the rest of the world over the<br />
past three decades. Its latest step into the future took place only weeks<br />
ago, when, for about €15 million, or a little more than $18 million, Unna<br />
obtained a vacuum induction melting furnace; this apparatus is known<br />
by the experts as a “VIM furnace,” short for vacuum induction melting.<br />
The simple word furnace does not, however, really do justice to this 30meter-long,<br />
12-meter-high plant with an installed power load of 7,000<br />
kVA. The metal construct is accessible via staircases and platforms,<br />
and the automatic melting and casting processes can be observed and<br />
controlled via monitors in the elevated helmstand.<br />
The actual furnace, the core of the plant, can be charged with<br />
solid or liquid material, and its 30-ton capacity is the biggest of any<br />
such facility in Europe. Indeed, with temperatures of up to 1,750 degrees<br />
Celsius, the material is melted under conditions that seem positively<br />
unearthly. Like a smooth soup, the pool crater has to be stirred,<br />
something that is done by an electro-magnetic mixer, while the vacuum<br />
allows for alloys that are free of oxygen, nitrogen and other unwanted<br />
impurities. After the casting, the molten mass is poured into transportable<br />
chill molds for cooling.<br />
The resulting metal blocks do not yet represent the final stage of<br />
purity, however. Some materials have to pass through the fire three<br />
times: this means that two remelting plants in Unna are used to further<br />
purify, homogenize and refine the material. The end products are highly<br />
pure super alloys that can be used in equipment such as turbine<br />
blades in steel drives, where a long lifecycle at high temperatures under<br />
extreme centrifugal force is required.<br />
ALLOYS WITH EXOTIC-SOUNDING NAMES<br />
For physicists, alloys are what thoroughbred horses are to breeders,<br />
and when reading the long list of creations you encounter such exotic<br />
names as Nicorros, Nimofer, Pernifer, Conicro, Cunifer and Magnifer.<br />
These are, of course, merely artificial names put together from the<br />
chemical signs of the involved metals – Ni standing for nickel, Cro for<br />
chrome, and Fer for iron. The alloy Nicrofer 5219 consists of no fewer<br />
than 11 elements, including iron and molybdenum, although nickel and<br />
chrome are the most important ones, with 52 percent and 19 percent,<br />
respectively.<br />
What has not changed in the Unna smelter over all these years is<br />
the so-called labeling of the material: before and after the fire. There<br />
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must be no mix-up, so not one of the metal blocks stored in the smelter<br />
hall and the yard is without a nametag.<br />
What flows from the casting chute into the furnace is processed<br />
into strips, bars, wires, sheets and foils, though this does not happen<br />
immediately in Unna. Some materials leave the building as glowing<br />
blocks in special transporters – they take with them part of the immense<br />
heat energy through which they were created. Further processing is a<br />
competition against temperature: in the Duisburg plant the chrome<br />
steel blocks are rolled into plates measuring 8 to 9 meters, though that<br />
is only a transitory stage. After that, the plates are transported to<br />
Ruhrort for sanding and then to the Bochum plant, where they are<br />
processed into four-millimeter-thick strips – at a residual temperature<br />
that remains at 300 degrees Celsius.<br />
A MATERIAL THAT REVOLUTIONIZES THE AUTOMOTIVE WORLD<br />
The final product – Aluchrom 7AI YHF – is a new creation that emerged<br />
from a federal research product and was awarded the environmental<br />
protection prize by the BDI, Germany’s main industrial association. The<br />
material, which is amalgamated with such foreign elements as yttrium<br />
and hafnium, is used to produce foils with a thickness of 30 to 40 micrometers.<br />
These are key components of modern metal catalysts for automotive<br />
engines, which have considerable advantages over ceramic,<br />
the classical carrier material; thanks to their fast heating, they are al-<br />
The materials with the<br />
toughest requirements have<br />
to go through the fire three<br />
times - only then do they reach<br />
the highest level of purity.<br />
What flows from the casting<br />
chute into the furnace<br />
is processed into foils, bands,<br />
bars, wires and sheets.<br />
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Alloys from the finest smelter<br />
VIM FURNACE 91<br />
ready fully effective in the start phase. The products concocted in Unna<br />
are among the most precious around, and are turned out in significant<br />
volumes. In 2002, more than 32,000 tons of nickel basis alloys were<br />
supplied, a third each to Germany, Europe and the United States. In the<br />
nickel segment, which was launched with coinages in the mid-19th century,<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> VDM is the world market leader. Added to this must<br />
be about 5,000 tons of special precious steels per year. Unna even helps<br />
ensure a pleasant evening in front of the television, since high-value<br />
shadow masks in cathode ray tubes are made of the special alloy<br />
Pernifer 36; they resemble a sieve with holes spaced 20 micrometers<br />
apart, a magnitude that the human eye basically cannot perceive. The<br />
material hardly stretches under high temperatures and thus allows for<br />
the creation of sharp color dots on the screen. Pernifer 42, meanwhile,<br />
serves as a carrier material for integrated switches, while Conicro 5010<br />
W is a heat-resistant material used in the thrusters of the Ariane rocket.<br />
The director of the Unna works, Dr. Jürgen Loh, who holds a doctorate<br />
in engineering, is a very competent guide through the amazing<br />
maze of high-performance materials, and one who enjoys painting the<br />
possibilities of the future. Crofer 22 APU, he points out, is an entirely<br />
new iron-chrome alloy characterized by tremendous heat resistance,<br />
conductivity and a low stretch coefficient – an ideal material for the serial<br />
production of fuel cells, the revolutionary power system expected to<br />
revolutionize the automotive world. 7
92 STAINLESS<br />
A material<br />
for the future<br />
Stainless steel has a long and<br />
unbroken tradition. Applications can<br />
be found in all areas of life<br />
By Christa Klein<br />
Thanks to its<br />
precisely manufactured<br />
surface shape, the<br />
NIROSTA ® membrane concave<br />
mirror makes very effective<br />
use of solar energy<br />
Stainless steel put<br />
to practical use on the<br />
dining table, in the form<br />
of gleaming cutlery<br />
Stainless steel is<br />
the ideal material for<br />
surgeons, who require<br />
clinical purity and<br />
sterility for their surgical<br />
instruments<br />
Agroundbreaking invention became a world-renowned brand –<br />
NIROSTA ® , an acronym standing for NIcht ROstender STAhl, the<br />
German term for rust-resistant steel. The patent was registered<br />
by the Fried. Krupp company as early as 1912 for the manufacture of<br />
rust-resistant steel, and its sale under the NIROSTA ® brand started 10<br />
years later, in 1922. Around the same time, Thyssen also started to<br />
manufacture rust-resistant steels, and the two companies cooperated<br />
in founding the Deutsche Edelstahlwerke AG in 1927.<br />
The triumphant march of rust-resistant metallic materials dates<br />
back to this time, and has continued without interruption to this day.<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Stainless is one of the few providers worldwide that can<br />
boast a complete range of rust-resistant stainless steel, basic nickel alloys<br />
and titanium. Rust-resistant stainless steel, in particular, has developed<br />
a special allure and is found in a variety of everyday applications:<br />
NIROSTA ® is used for custom-made consumer goods, industrial<br />
applications, and in architecture. The surface of this stainless steel is<br />
aesthetically pleasing, and found frequently in homes, while the material’s<br />
particular advantage in medical applications and in the food and<br />
tobacco industry lies in its resistance not only to rust but to heat. The<br />
products’ corrosion-resistance is accompanied by the highest possible<br />
level of purity and cleanliness.<br />
Stainless steel has long become a symbol in itself, a material that<br />
mirrors and reflects the modern world in a perfect combination of elegance<br />
and practicality. Would the spectacular roof of the Chrysler Building<br />
in Manhattan, covered in rust-resistant steel in 1929, have otherwise<br />
become so famous? Or remained known around the world for<br />
more than seven decades?<br />
Stainless steel will continue to fire the imagination of designers<br />
and architects as well as material specialists who are steadily working<br />
on extending its areas of application. For if this material owns something,<br />
it is the future.<br />
“Form follows function”<br />
– a principle that is<br />
also true in the case of<br />
the stainless steel chair,<br />
which combines both<br />
safety and beauty<br />
The architect Frank O’Gehry<br />
raised a monument to<br />
stainless steel at the Neue<br />
Zollhof harbor front<br />
development in Düsseldorf<br />
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The corrosion resistance<br />
of stainless steel presents<br />
an advantage for washer<br />
drums, because even<br />
aggressive detergents<br />
do not corrode NIROSTA ®<br />
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The manufacture<br />
of complicated household<br />
applications out of<br />
stainless steel does not<br />
present any problems, even<br />
in automated production<br />
Hygiene is<br />
indispensable for<br />
food producers,<br />
and stainless steel<br />
guarantees it better<br />
than any other<br />
material<br />
Chemical processing<br />
technology needs stainless<br />
steel, which boasts<br />
a high level of both<br />
strength and formability<br />
Fans of Alessi<br />
objects will fondly<br />
remember Aldo Rossi,<br />
the designer who<br />
brought this applied art<br />
form into households<br />
Automotive manufacturers<br />
like the stability and<br />
light weight of rust-resistant<br />
stainless steels for<br />
various applications<br />
Chefs like stainless<br />
steel casserole pans<br />
because of their high<br />
heat resistance<br />
STAINLESS 93<br />
Using stainless steel<br />
is an art, and some<br />
designers put it to<br />
very creative uses
94 MAGNESIUM<br />
Magnesium is a demanding<br />
material, and is dangerous<br />
only in its liquid form. In fact,<br />
magnesium sheets are much<br />
less flammable than many<br />
other vehicle components.
The lightweight<br />
among basic materials<br />
Magnesium has a future – as long as<br />
magnesium sheets can be made price-competitive<br />
By Sybille Wilhelm | Photos Thomas Balzer<br />
MAGNESIUM 95
96 MAGNESIUM<br />
A sustainable material<br />
The main advantage of<br />
using magnesium in car<br />
bodies? Its lightness reduces<br />
overall vehicle weight,<br />
allowing for significant<br />
reductions in fuel consumption<br />
and emissions.
MAGNESIUM 97
98 MAGNESIUM<br />
As a mineral, it is an insider’s tip against a hangover, since magnesium<br />
taken promptly after a night of too much drinking will<br />
soothe most aching heads. In fact, this is one material on which<br />
the human organism greatly depends: the roughly 25 grams of magnesium<br />
found in an adult body is essential to more than 300 biochemical<br />
reactions, among them muscle and nerve functions, keeping the<br />
heartbeat stable, and strengthening bones.<br />
In medicine, magnesium has been known for several centuries,<br />
with such compounds as Epsom salts being used as a traditional cure.<br />
About 250 years ago, the British chemist Joseph Black also discovered<br />
the metal’s elementary character, with magnesium later being given the<br />
atomic number 12 in the periodic table and shortly thereafter the abbreviation<br />
Mg.<br />
The fact that magnesium is also a material with unique properties,<br />
however, was not discovered until about 80 years ago. No other known<br />
metal is as light – even a comparable aluminum sheet weighs a third<br />
more – and as the lightest metallic construction material around, by a<br />
large margin, magnesium allows for a diversification into technical<br />
areas not covered by steel.<br />
COMPARING FAVORABLY TO OTHER MATERIALS<br />
With materials, three things matter above all: strength in relation to its<br />
thickness, formability and adjustability, explains Bernhard Engl, managing<br />
director of Magnesium Flachprodukte GmbH (MgF), a part of the<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Steel group headquartered in the university town of<br />
Freiberg, Saxony. Compared to other materials, magnesium performs<br />
particularly well with regard to these factors in many applications: for<br />
example, when used on large construction elements, above all in sheet<br />
form. Much therefore speaks in favor of using magnesium as a material<br />
for car bodies, says Engl.<br />
And magnesium in car bodies means environmental protection,<br />
since, according to a U.S. study, the use of magnesium sheets can re-<br />
Magnesium has very special<br />
characteristics. For one,<br />
no other known metal is<br />
as light. This important fact<br />
alone is enough to encourage<br />
research and development<br />
into more future uses<br />
for this material.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
duce a car’s weight by about 100 kilograms, resulting in better fuel<br />
economy and less pollution. Magnesium is not, however, a simple material,<br />
and has a relatively low melting and boiling point. When heated<br />
under exposure to air, it burns into magnesium oxide from about 500 degrees<br />
centigrade with the characteristic blinding white flame. Still, magnesium<br />
only appears hazardous to those who know too little about it, explains<br />
Engl, who holds a doctorate in material and forming engineering.<br />
Obviously, the melting and processing center in Freiberg knows<br />
about magnesium’s reaction to extreme heat, and the team has put in<br />
place comprehensive precautionary measures. Liquid magnesium is<br />
processed only in a gas-shielded atmosphere, with three-level security.<br />
Yet magnesium is a problematic material only in its liquid form, whereas<br />
a magnesium body is actually less flammable than other vehicle<br />
parts. And when individual components in a car are made of magnesium<br />
the material also does not represent a risk, according to Engl; at<br />
a fire, firefighters will initially struggle with materials much more prone<br />
to be ignited.<br />
The precautions that have to be taken in magnesium processing<br />
are therefore not the reason why so few parts in a vehicle are currently<br />
made of magnesium: the reason is that magnesium sheets are still too<br />
expensive.<br />
In fact, only about 1 percent of magnesium produced worldwide is<br />
used in sheets, although there is more than enough magnesium around.<br />
While “Mg” does not exist in its elementary form, but only in compounds,<br />
it is found everywhere, for example in the earth’s crust or in the mineral<br />
dolomite, of which the Dolomite Mountains of northern Italy are made.<br />
And also in the sea: when sea water is desalinated to obtain drinking<br />
water, a large amount of magnesium chloride is a by-product, and<br />
by using this refuse to produce magnesium, two birds are killed with<br />
one stone; not only is there no cost for storing or disposing of the<br />
“refuse,” but processed magnesium is every recycler’s dream, since it<br />
can be easily remelted.<br />
A raw material with<br />
no volume problems<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
MAGNESIUM 99<br />
Engl confirms that there is no shortage of magnesium as a raw<br />
material, but because pricing uncertainty renders estimates regarding<br />
the use of magnesium sheets in cars highly unpredictable, one of the<br />
key tasks of the Freiberg research group is to find out at what price<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> can offer magnesium sheets. Since the company cannot<br />
influence the world market price of this material, its research team<br />
has to develop ideas and optimize plant level processes intelligently.<br />
Together with the University of Freiberg, <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> has thus<br />
developed – and filed an application to patent – a casting-rolling technology<br />
that allows for the industrial production of top-quality magnesium<br />
sheets that can sell for less than the sheets now on the market.<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> already knows that this is possible, and that its sheets,<br />
with their measurements and consistency, could be put to immediate<br />
use. For at a maximum 1.3 millimeters, the sheets are relatively thin,<br />
but nonetheless stable. The first deep-drawn test components that Engl<br />
can present prove that magnesium components do not have to be cast;<br />
from the technical side, then, nothing stands in the way of using magnesium<br />
sheets.<br />
The problem lies on the sales side, because it is the customers<br />
who decide whether magnesium sheets will be accepted in substantial<br />
volume for lightweight assembly and can therefore be offered at prices<br />
that are competitive with other materials. It is precisely this issue,<br />
though, that has so far proven difficult: one would have to know, for example,<br />
how many sheets a carmaker would be prepared to buy, and at<br />
what price.<br />
As soon as auto makers fully understand the advantages of this<br />
material, the first manufacturers could be using <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> magnesium<br />
sheets in serial production. And when used in the automotive and<br />
aviation industries, the new sheets offer an immense diversity of applications,<br />
from hoods, roofs and dash panels to seat pans.<br />
In other words, magnesium is one lightweight that can look forward<br />
to a great future. 7
100 OBERRIED<br />
A storage<br />
gallery blessed<br />
by St. Barbara<br />
By Heribert Klein | Photos Walter Schmitz<br />
The Barbara underground<br />
shelter is found in Oberried,<br />
south of Freiburg in the<br />
Breisgau region. It is here<br />
that Germany’s so-called<br />
cultural heritage is stored<br />
in stainless steel containers.<br />
The triple white-blue<br />
sign has been awarded just<br />
five times in the world and<br />
only once in Germany: it<br />
indicates that the cultural<br />
goods in Oberried enjoy<br />
special protection.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
OBERRIED 101
102 OBERRIED<br />
Archived for ever and ever<br />
The material used to make<br />
these special containers comes<br />
from <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Nirosta in<br />
Dillenburg. The containers are<br />
subjected to tough standards<br />
because the stored microfilms<br />
have to be protected for centuries<br />
from air, moisture and other<br />
adverse outside influences.
OBERRIED 103
104 OBERRIED
OBERRIED 105<br />
Safe from all the elements<br />
When the containers arrive<br />
at the shelter entrance,<br />
they have seen daylight for<br />
the last time. Their complex<br />
welding and closing technology<br />
guarantees total insulation<br />
inside the shelter, at a constant<br />
temperature of 10 degrees<br />
centigrade.
106 OBERRIED<br />
Surrounded by gneiss and granite<br />
The stainless steel containers are<br />
a treasure cove for the culture<br />
of an entire country. More than<br />
700 million documents are stored<br />
on film in the shiny containers, which<br />
will protect them long into the future<br />
in a safe, controlled environment.
OBERRIED 107
108 OBERRIED<br />
Nothing betrays the existence of the unique treasure of German intellectual life<br />
that is buried deep in the ground, hidden in the middle of a forest in southern<br />
Germany. The white-blue sign behind the barred door is inconspicuous, with<br />
nothing to indicate that cultural goods are kept under special protection here. The visitor<br />
almost feels as though he has entered the Kyffhäuser, the maze of caves in which<br />
the Emperor Barbarossa resides, waiting to return.<br />
In reality, the visitor has entered the Barbara underground shelter in Oberried,<br />
near Freiburg. The facility is no less than the “central storage place of the Federal Republic<br />
of Germany.”<br />
With his shoulder-length hair, Roland Stachowiak of the Central Office for Civil<br />
Protection may bear some similarity to the medieval red-beard, but in the Barbara<br />
shelter this administrative official charged with the “protection of cultural goods” becomes<br />
a tour guide. Wearing a helmet and a yellow jacket he marches ahead, 500<br />
meters (1,650 feet) in all, through air that is 10 degrees centigrade and has a relative<br />
humidity of 75 percent.<br />
“The real storage gallery starts behind this steel door,” Stachowiak says. Once<br />
he has adjusted the combination lock, he needs two strong arms to open the 1.5meter-thick<br />
steel door that was built by Thyssen Industries three decades ago. A<br />
few more steps and the treasure trove, 100 meters in length, reveals its treasures.<br />
CULTURE IN IN-SITU REINFORCED CONCRETE BEHIND STEEL DOORS<br />
It is, of course, a different kind of treasure trove, and anyone hoping to find invaluable<br />
relics of long-gone eras here will be disappointed. Instead, about 1,300 stainless steel<br />
containers are stored on two levels, firmly closed, and differentiated only by a code.<br />
The containers are filled with films, microfilmed archive material with a unique value<br />
and, according to the sign, “of special significance to German history and culture.”<br />
Each of the containers, which are made of V-2-A stainless steel, contains 24,320 meters<br />
of microfilm, meaning that nearly 32 million meters of film showing more than 700<br />
million documents are stored in this shelter below the Schauinsland hills.<br />
The project appears strange, almost spooky, but Stachowiak stresses just how<br />
serious it is. “The Hague Convention of 1954 is an international agreement for cultural<br />
protection,” he explains. “The Federal Republic of Germany signed the convention<br />
in 1967. The first documents were stored in the Barbara underground shelter in 1975.<br />
The gallery itself was lined with in-situ reinforced concrete and secured with pressure<br />
doors. From the start, very high technical demands were applied to the steel containers.<br />
After all, the microfilms in the containers had to be protected from adverse out-<br />
Under the Hague Convention of 1954,<br />
the Barbara underground shelter<br />
is reserved for the storage of objects<br />
with cultural signifigance.<br />
Roland Stachowiak of the Central Office<br />
for Civil Protection ensures that<br />
the cultural documents are safely moved<br />
to their final place of rest.<br />
History’s final<br />
place of rest<br />
side influences.” Anybody wishing to find out more about<br />
these containers has to travel quite a distance from the<br />
shelter – to the small town of Haiger, about a 90-minute<br />
drive north of Frankfurt, where the UCON company makes<br />
the containers. Klaus Kettner, responsible for sales of remolding<br />
technology at UCON, apparently knows every last<br />
detail about his company’s highly sophisticated cylindrical<br />
container, as he calls it.<br />
“We procure the pre-cut parts from <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong><br />
Nirosta in Dillenburg,” just a few kilometers down the<br />
road, he says. “The material has to be suitable for deep<br />
drawing, with a high heat treatment. At a depth of 350<br />
millimeters per side, we have to draw a relatively deep<br />
corpus for the upper and lower parts. It is important that<br />
the material does not break during the drawing process<br />
without annealing. For this purpose, we have built special<br />
tools that are unique to our company. Thanks not least to<br />
this exclusivity, we have supplied the containers for the<br />
Barbara storage facility in Oberried for many years.”<br />
It is a matter of course that the containers are stored<br />
in airtight and climate-controlled conditions in the shelter.<br />
No sound from the noisy outside world enters, and apart<br />
from the staff and some experts few people come around<br />
to this hidden cultural treasure. The strict simplicity of the<br />
area, which receives heavy snowfall in the winter, can be<br />
impressive – the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-<br />
1976) called the region a “creative landscape” where “all<br />
of this pushes and shoves and swings through everyday<br />
existence up there.”<br />
Could there be any better place for culture to take a<br />
rest, in line with DIN standards for at least 500 years? Stachowiak<br />
asks rhetorically. The micro films may even last<br />
for 1,500 years, he says, adding laconically that “we certainly<br />
won’t be able to check that.”<br />
From the start, provisions were made to ensure that<br />
the microfilms remain undisturbed from all outside<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
sources of disturbance. Even if no one uses the term “atomic bomb security” here,<br />
Stachowiak notes that the surrounding granite and gneiss rock is highly resistant, that<br />
there is an overflight ban applying to military jets, and that tanks must not come within<br />
five kilometers, or about three miles. And, as this official in charge of the storage<br />
area likes to point out, “We place great value on the top quality of our containers.”<br />
Indeed, Klaus Kettner’s outline of the closure technology alone provides a hint<br />
of the sort of quality standards required of containers that have to resist high pressure;<br />
the stainless steel flanges are welded on the inside and the outside, a nut is<br />
worked into them, and a copper ring is placed in the nut. “We used to use a rubber<br />
ring, but that was too soft and became porous,” says Kettner. So they tested rings<br />
made from composition rubber, but those tore and dissolved.<br />
“Today,” adds Kettner, “we use pure copper insulation. The copper is rounded<br />
and welded at both ends, creating a slight bulge that is calibrated. The weld seam has<br />
to perfectly match the diameter in the original material. Only thus can we ensure total<br />
insulation.”<br />
In the end, everything is bolted together, and should remain sealed for several<br />
centuries. If a container has to be opened, the ring will have to be renewed because<br />
it is destroyed in the process. “It is a relatively complicated production process that<br />
requires a lot of manual skill,” Kettner says.<br />
Deep inside the mountain, there is no hint of that, only that the containers stored<br />
here today differ from their predecessors insofar as the latter were marked by a lot of<br />
welding seams. Their successors’ exterior intactness also applies to the interior. Sixteen<br />
rolls, each containing 1,520 meters of microfilm, can be stored on the “pie crusts”<br />
in a stainless steel container, effectively forever. As a sample for inspection, color<br />
copies of archived documents have been placed on a few containers. If, far in the future,<br />
someone wants to know more about the Peace of Venice in 1174, the title page<br />
of the Golden Bull of King Wenceslas of 1400, the Basic Rights of the German People<br />
according to the Empire Administrator Johann or Emperor Frederick August I’s call for<br />
public tenders on June 27, 1694, the answers will be found in the Barbara shelter.<br />
STEEL CONTAINERS FOR ‘THE LAND OF POETS AND THINKERS’<br />
Which leads to the “why” question. The German Interior Ministry provides just €3 million<br />
for this type of archiving per year, which Stachowiak, without a trace of smugness,<br />
describes as a laughable sum for the self-styled “land of poets and thinkers.” He considers<br />
it a duty to carefully preserve cultural goods for future generations, an effort<br />
that needs to be thought through on a long-term basis immune from short-term mon-<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
OBERRIED 109<br />
etary concerns, specifically the German government’s<br />
cash crunch. “For years I have tried to point out what is at<br />
stake here, but the response from the federal and state<br />
ministries in charge of cultural protection leaves much to<br />
be desired,” Stachowiak says, somewhat resigned, because<br />
the shelter is such a remarkable project: the triple<br />
white-blue sign has been awarded just five times worldwide<br />
– and only once in Germany.<br />
A HERITAGE LASTING 1,000 YEARS<br />
The notion that digital archiving technologies will render<br />
this sort of storage area superfluous is rejected outright<br />
by Stachowiak. Together with the Fraunhofer Institute for<br />
physical measuring technology, the Central Office for Civil<br />
Protection is working on transferring digital data onto analog<br />
color film, because film lasts much longer than digital<br />
data carriers. And, he adds, the Internet would allow for<br />
the current usage of filmed archived material if this idea<br />
were put into practice. The fees for electronic representation<br />
on the Web would amortize a considerable share of<br />
the costs of archiving in Oberried, he says.<br />
So the Barbara shelter will be needed for a long time<br />
yet, and demand for its services may even grow. UCON<br />
will be happy to hear that more containers will be needed<br />
from 2004, to accommodate the microfilming of more library<br />
contents. The expert for the protection of cultural<br />
heritage points out that a second storage gallery will have<br />
to be opened up in the near future – for the sake of a future<br />
that preserves the past: in the dark, optimally air-conditioned,<br />
earthquake resistant, and surrounded by stainless<br />
steel. One that will last 500 or 1,000 years, maybe<br />
even 2,000 years or longer.<br />
It is therefore reassuring to learn that, unlike in the<br />
legend, there is no Barbarossa here who could leave the<br />
underground gallery to cause mischief among the people<br />
above. 7
110 GLOSSARY<br />
Basic materials at a glance<br />
What differentiates them and how many are nonetheless interlinked<br />
Ores are minerals that are so loaded<br />
with usable metal that they are suitable for<br />
metal generation. These ores, however,<br />
do not contain only the usable metals or<br />
their chemical compounds, but also other<br />
minerals (e.g. lime or quartz).<br />
Iron ores. The most important iron ores are<br />
iron-oxygen compounds such as magnetite,<br />
hematite and limonite (pyrite and iron pyrites<br />
are iron-sulfur compounds). They are used<br />
to gain iron through smoke firing with carbon<br />
in blast furnaces. Coke is commonly used<br />
for this purpose. The ferrous oxides are<br />
cogged with fluxes such as sand or limestone<br />
so that these, together with the<br />
remaining ores, form a slag that can easily<br />
be separated from the crude iron.<br />
Crude iron. The crude iron that<br />
leaves the blast furnace is very hard and<br />
brittle and cannot be formed mechanically.<br />
The reason: crude iron, which consists<br />
of 90 percent iron, also contains up to<br />
5 percent carbon and other impurities<br />
such as manganese (2 percent), silicone<br />
(1 percent), phosphorus (0.3 percent) and<br />
sulfur (0.4 percent).<br />
Slags. A slag is the mixture formed<br />
from ores and flux in the blast furnace<br />
process. It consists, among other<br />
things, of silicic acid, metal oxides and<br />
lime. Because of its lower density, the<br />
slag floats on the liquid crude iron and<br />
solidifies into a hyaline mass after cooling.<br />
Slags are either disposed of or processed<br />
into blast furnace concrete. As so-called<br />
stabilized slag (which is processed into<br />
LiDonit ® through the combination of oxygen<br />
and quartz sand), it is also used in road<br />
construction as a surface cover with a high<br />
level of grip and resistance.<br />
Steel. Steel is a concept covering a large<br />
group of iron materials, which thanks to their<br />
good processing properties and durability<br />
count among the valuable production materials.<br />
If impurities are largely removed from<br />
crude iron and the carbon content is reduced<br />
to at most 2 percent, the result is malleable<br />
iron commonly known as steel. Carbon is an<br />
important alloy element of steel. Even small<br />
amounts of it influence the malleability and<br />
hardness of steel. Today, there are about<br />
2,000 different types of steel, which can be<br />
divided into two major groups according to<br />
their chemical consistency and characteristics<br />
of use. Categorized by their chemical<br />
consistency, there are alloy and non-alloy<br />
steels. Categorized by application, there are<br />
basic steels, carbon steels and stainless<br />
steels.<br />
Stainless steel. In 1912, the company<br />
Fried. Krupp obtained the first-ever patent for<br />
the production of rust-resistant steel. From<br />
this time, rust-resistant stainless steel was<br />
supplied around the world. Since 1922, rustresistant<br />
stainless steel has been marketed<br />
under the NIROSTA ® brand, an abbreviation<br />
for the German translation of rust-resistant<br />
steel. In the case of stainless steel, the physical<br />
and chemical characteristics are improved<br />
by other alloy metals, so-called steel<br />
grafters. Chrome contributes to corrosion resistance<br />
and increases hardness. Together<br />
with nickel it improves corrosion resistance<br />
(NIROSTA ® ). Molybdenum and tungsten increase<br />
heat resistance so that the steel remains<br />
solid even in red heat. Vanadium improves<br />
solidity, while manganese reduces<br />
the abrasion from steel tools. Depending on<br />
the carbon content and added metals, the<br />
different stainless steels also sport different<br />
characteristics. <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> Stainless offers<br />
all rust-resistant metallic materials: rustresistant<br />
stainless steel, basic nickel alloys<br />
and titanium.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |<br />
Titanium is the ninth most common element<br />
in the earth’s crust, accounting for<br />
0.6 percent of its overall volume. It is,<br />
however, widely dispersed and found only<br />
in small concentrations, usually in ironbearing<br />
ores. Today there are two categories<br />
of titanium: Commercially pure titanium,<br />
which includes less than 1 percent<br />
other elements such as oxygen, carbon<br />
and iron, and conventional titanium containing<br />
up to 20 percent of these elements.<br />
Titanium has numerous applications, including<br />
automobiles, medical technology<br />
and even jewelry. It is extremely corrosion<br />
resistant, strong at minimal thicknesses,<br />
and stands up very well to mechanical and<br />
thermal stress .<br />
Aluminum is a silver-white light metal that<br />
is particularly corrosion-resistant thanks to<br />
a surface oxide layer formed through combination<br />
with air. Due to its high oxygen<br />
affinity, aluminum does not exist as a<br />
metal in its pure form, but it is the earth’s<br />
most common metal within compounds,<br />
making up about 8 percent of the earth’s<br />
crust. Despite its prevalence, it was only<br />
discovered as a metal in 1827, because its<br />
preparation is technically very difficult. Aluminum’s<br />
favorable strength-to-density<br />
ratio delivers strength with low weight and<br />
makes it indispensable in aviation and vehicle<br />
technology.<br />
GLOSSARY 111<br />
Magnesium is a shiny silver (base) light<br />
metal that burns into magnesium oxide in a<br />
glaring white light. When in contact with air it<br />
forms an impermeable cover of magnesium<br />
oxide and thus protects the magnesium from<br />
further oxidation. In nature, it exists in<br />
mineral magnesium compounds, for example<br />
in magnesite and dolomite or in<br />
dissolved form in sea water. Magnesium and<br />
magnesium alloys are now used as<br />
versatile basic materials.<br />
Polycarbonate is a so-called thermoplastic<br />
and belongs to the group of technical synthetics.<br />
It was first produced by H. Schell at<br />
Bayer in 1953 and from 1958 was used in<br />
industrial production. Similarly, D.W. Fox, a<br />
General Electric employee, discovered polycarbonate,<br />
which was then also produced industrially<br />
by General Electric. In concrete<br />
terms, polycarbonate is part of the group of<br />
polyesters. Among its special characteristics<br />
are crystal-clear transparency and extraordinarily<br />
high dart impact strength. It can be<br />
nailed and screwed without splintering – at<br />
temperatures from -40 to +115 degrees<br />
centigrade. It is very well suited to being<br />
used as a protective material in industrial<br />
settings or as side and rear windows in vehicles;<br />
it is transparent, like glass, yet highly<br />
resistant to even heavy impacts. Polycarbonate<br />
has a long lifecycle with high and durable<br />
color fastness, is resistant to petroleum<br />
products, oils and fats, and its electrical insulation<br />
characteristics are very good. Not<br />
only is polycarbonate far more shatter-proof<br />
than glass, but because of its lower specific<br />
weight it can be handled more easily. ckl
112 PUBLICATIONS<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> <strong>Magazin</strong>e<br />
Sustainability was the theme uniting all the topics<br />
covered in the entire edition of the Thyssen<br />
Krupp <strong>Magazin</strong>e that appeared before year’s<br />
end. The issue contained a number of examples<br />
illustrating how <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> works on sustainability<br />
while maintaining a future-oriented approach:<br />
hydroforming uses water pressure to<br />
form the hardest steels, and the new FR30 steel<br />
resists fire for half an hour; the concept of the<br />
TWIN elevator (two elevator cabs arranged one<br />
above the other in the same shaft) is revolutionizing<br />
the way elevators operate; and new sheet<br />
piling stabilizes dikes over long periods. All<br />
these examples prove one thing: <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong><br />
develops products that save resources, energy<br />
and money. As you can see, at <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong><br />
we keep the goal of sustabinability in the forefront<br />
of everything we do.<br />
<strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> <strong>Magazin</strong>e<br />
To order a copy of current or past<br />
editions of <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> <strong>Magazin</strong>e,<br />
please visit www.thyssenkrupp.com<br />
and click on “Publications” in the<br />
service-navigation area.<br />
“If you want to get things moving, you had better get moving yourself”<br />
was the motto for the <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> <strong>Magazin</strong>e edition that appeared in the<br />
summer of 2003. As the Chairman of the Executive Board, Prof. Dr. Ekkehard<br />
D. Schulz, put it: “We have to bring movement into thinking.” You can find out<br />
what he means in the issue’s 20 articles, which profile such diverse innovations<br />
as an escalator up a mountainside in Toledo, the ultimate in yachts from<br />
Blohm + Voss, a water roller coaster with <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong>-built steel pylons,<br />
and large anti-friction bearings from Rothe Erde that do the most technically<br />
sophisticated milling jobs. Other examples of how the company is delivering<br />
innovation? In Asturia, we are developing a moving walkway that changes<br />
speeds; in England, our rails are an integral part of a new high-speed rail<br />
line, and in Scotland we are restoring the legendary Forth Rail Bridge.<br />
Through its unique expertise <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> is becoming an indispensable<br />
partner for auto makers, not least thanks to Simultaneous Engineering techniques<br />
that save time and money. We are also the most important partner in<br />
a very different line of endeavor – as tour sponsor for the German cult band<br />
PUR. A profile of the group’s lead singer, Hartmut Engler, also makes for interesting<br />
reading in the summer 2003 edition of the <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> magazine.<br />
Publisher: <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong> AG, Dr. Jürgen Claassen, August-Thyssen-Strasse 1, 40211 Düsseldorf, Telephone: +49 211-824-0<br />
Project Management: Dr. Heribert Klein (responsible for editorial content) • Art Director: Peter Breul<br />
Project Management at <strong>ThyssenKrupp</strong>: Barbara Scholten<br />
Editorial address: Redaktionsbüro Dr. Heribert Klein, Wichernweg 8, 65549 Limburg,<br />
Telephone: +49 6431 47610, Fax: +49 6431 408916, e-mail: H.Klein@teliko.net<br />
Writers: Rüdiger Abele, Benedikt Breith, Sebastian Groß, Christa Klein, Carsten Knop, Sybille Wilhelm, Dieter Vogt<br />
Proofreading and Picture Editor: Christa Klein • Layout: Esther Rodriguez<br />
Publishing House: F.A.Z.-Institut für Management-, Markt- und Medieninformationen GmbH,<br />
Mainzer Landstraße 195, 60326 Frankfurt am Main, Telephone: +49 69–75 91-0, Fax: +49 69–75 91-1966<br />
Managing Directors: Dr. Gero Kalt, Volker Sach, Peter Steinke<br />
Lithography: Goldbeck Sytem-Litho, Frankfurt am Main<br />
Printing: SocietätsDruck, Mörfelden<br />
The contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.<br />
Excerpts may only be reproduced with attribution and if a sample copy is provided.<br />
TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 |