Quality standards: a steelmaker's view

Abstract

The control of surface and internal semi-product and bar quality is achieved by a combination of selection of the correct steelmaking, reheating and rolling techniques, followed by a final inspection currently based largely on visual, or assisted visual, techniques and destructive sampling. The process route followed is determined by the knowledge of the customer's requirements and processing techniques, which demands that the steelmaker is familiar with both in depth. Present inspection techniques generally do not match either the increasing throughput rates of steelworks or the ever greater demands for consistency that the user requires to ensure the most economic development of his own processes. At this conference it is hoped that those who will describe their inspection systems will be explicit as to what parameter their equipment will measure. Equally, it is necessary for the steelmaker and user industries to redouble their efforts to arrive at a satisfactory expression of tolerable defectiveness in numerical and metallurgical terms, otherwise manpower-intensive inspection systems will continue with obvious economic consequences.