Induction heating...

[scottickes]

I thought you'd all enjoy seeing a bar of hot steel passing between two stages of an induction heating system in a rolling mill. This bar is approximately a 10" round at this point. It will be rolled down even further. This round bar of steel started it's life at about 4' x 4' square billet that is about 15' long.

All of our knife steel starts out being made this way. Sometimes the starting billet isn't quite as large, yet it's way too large for our hammers and presses, until the rolling mills work it down for us.

I thought it was a cool photo worth sharing.

 

[Sam Salvati]

Cool picture Scott thanks for sharing!

 

[richard j]

its amazing how a strong electromagnetic field can heat up metal in seconds. a friend works at a place that uses the same method for silver soldering carbide to cutters they make.

 

[Justin.Mercier]

Yeah, unfortunately induction heating isnt very practicall for blacksmithing, though it could be used for knife making. It really only works and becomes cost effective when you're repeatedly heating a consistant size and can tailor the coil used to the shape and size needed, such as production work of large numbers of a single part. It's very impressive when you see induction heating in action however.

 

[mete]

If you crank up the power a bit you can melt steel !! BTDT

 

[B Finnigan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7fArOvXhQY&feature=related

 

[Justin.Mercier]

Yep, they're wicked fast,but as you can see in that video, you have fit whatever you're heating within the coil and odd shapes don't work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma3VDDv2d-E

 

[mete]

Justin, that's how I made my steel for my thesis but I never cracked a crucible !!

 

[boilermaker]

wow! what a post anvil that would be ,4' x 4' x 15' long! bit hard to move though. how fast does induction heating heat a billet that size up?

 

[JTknives]

is there any place that will roll out custom flat stock. if some one wanted 5000 pounds of L6 round rolled out is it possible