pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 70)
used to handle the molds for making pig beds on the cast house
floor and for carrying the 26'-0" long pigs to the end of the
building where a series of motor driven rollers conveyed them to
a mechanical pig breaker. The pig breaker, which in itself
represented a vast improvement over the common and extremely
arduous method employed at the time of breaking and carrying the
pigs by hand, was quickly supplanted by the Uehling pig casting
machine. Under the new system, molten iron was run from the
furnace directly into ladle cars and transported to the pig
caster which was located along the shoreline of the Monongahela
River near the southern end of the plant. First introduced at
Duquesne, the machine consisted of an endless chain which carried
molds into which the molten iron was poured. The molds were
cooled by immersion in water and the solidified iron dropped from
them into a waiting railroad car. Before each cast the molds
were coated with lime to keep the iron from sticking. About 25
percent of the iron produced during the early years of the
plant's operation were cast in this way.
The remaining iron was tapped directly into 25-ton ladle
cars. Preparation of the ladles prior to tapping took place in
an existing ladle house which was built in 188 6 to prepare ladles
used at the Bessemer converter plant. From the cast house the
ladle cars were taken directly for use in the Bessemer plant or
after 1902, the open hearth furnace plant where internal
desulphurization took place. 3
Two new furnaces, numbers five and six, and a new ladle
house were added in 1909. The furnaces were laid out linearly
along the same line as the original four. Each furnace was 94 1 -
0" high with a hearth diameter of 17'-0" and a bosh diameter of
22"-0". The casting facilities for both furnaces were located in
a one story, 310'-0" long x 60'-7 3/4" wide building which
adjoined the two furnaces. The new ladle house replaced the
original ladle house which became a car repair shop for the
work's rolling stock (ladle cars, cinder pot cars, and raw
material transfer cars). In addition a new pouring building was
built by the American Bridge Company just south of the new ladle
house. The one story, 26*-0" wide x 119'-6" long steel framed
corrugated metal building housed four new double strand Heyl and
Patterson pig casting machines of the Uehling type.
During the major reconstruction of the blast furnace plant
between 1918 and 1924 the cast houses at furnace numbers one
through four were rebuilt because the presence of the pig casting
machines made it unnecessary to cast molds inside of the
buildings. Consequently, the length of each cast house was
decreased by over one-hundred feet and the cranes serving the old
pig breaker were removed. Each of the blast furnaces, save