AMM - American Metal Market
January 5, 2007
By Michael Marley

Forget factory bundles. In the not-too-distant future, scrap brokers and mill buyers might be bidding on "wafers" from the auto industry's stamping plants if A.G. "Chip" Hering, Ferrous Processing & Trading's resident tinkerer, has his way.

Hering, executive vice president of the Detroit-based scrap processor, has been promoting his company's new RamPress, a press equipped with hardware and computer technology to process sheet steel scrap at a stamping plant and package it into a form that pleases both integrated steelmakers and electric furnace based mini-mills.

This is accomplished by producing not a densified oblong basic oxygen furnace (BOF) bundle that measures about 2 feet by 2 feet by 4 feet, but by pressing the sheet steel offal into a wafer that looks more like a bale of old cardboard cartons. Key is the thickness of the so-called "wafer," which can range from 20 inches down to as little as 6 inches.

The thinner wafer is more attractive to many electric furnace melters, who have long complained that the big BOF-sized auto bundles can break the carbon electrodes in their electric furnaces—an expense to replace, not to mention lost production time.

The bigger factory bundles have been favored by integrated mills that typically bought most of the auto industry scrap and like dropping dense forms of scrap into their oxygen furnaces. Now, with more mini-mills in the flat-rolled business, the demand for prime steel scrap has spread. But mini-mills, both the new flat-rolled steelmakers and the older electric furnace mills that make bar and structural products, prefer looser forms of industrial steel scrap like No. 1 busheling. If they do buy bundles, they typically want them smaller—usually no larger than a 2-foot cube.

Ferrous Processing & Trading said it developed the RamPress to address this evolving electric furnace scrap demand while still serving the needs of integrated steelmakers. The patent-pending RamPress process can produce a high-density scrap "wafer" with dimensions of 3 feet by 5 feet and a thickness that can be adjusted automatically (and remotely) from 20 inches (BOF grade) to 6 inches (electric furnace grade), while an automated loading system loads outbound trucks or railroad gondolas with the maximum allowable weight to minimize freight costs.

Ferrous Processing & Trading developed its wafer-making RamPress about two years ago and has been using it to process steel scrap at Ford Motor Co.'s Maumee, Ohio, stamping plant, Hering said. Those wafers have found a home at a nearby electric furnace-based steel mill that never used factory or No. 1 dealer bundles in the past, he added.
 

The genesis for the RamPress system was a Ferrous Processing & Trading subsidiary that had a trash compaction system that could be used to compact stamping plant scrap into roll-off containers for ease of shipping to the scrapyard, Hering said. Uncompacted, Ferrous Processing & Trading's trucks were carting typical roll-off containers carrying perhaps 7 to 8 tons of steel scrap to a yard to be unloaded and baled again. With compactors, the trucks carry about 21 tons.

Ferrous Processing & Trading adapted that compaction system for use in the scrap business and made it a bit beefier to permit the company to take advantage of the heavier truck load limit allowed in Michigan, Hering said. The company has about nine of the compaction systems in place.

The initial idea was simply to compress the scrap into a closed container and haul it to the scrapyard. The problem was that when the truck arrived at the scrapyard and dumped it out, the material fell apart and was fluffy scrap again—just as it had been at the plant. As a result, it had to be rebaled before it could be shipped to a steel mill.

To resolve the problem, Hering said he suggested that a big door be installed, which serves as a platen in compacting the scrap into a wafer at the plant. "It's basically a single-ram baler and you control the thickness of the wafer by how much you put in the charge before you bring the ram forward. It has all this automation tied to it, so you can run it without people," Hering said. "You get the density, but you still get the thin cross-section that melts quickly. The RamPress door opens and out pops a wafer. All the wafers lay there like a loaf of sliced bread."

Hering, a Lehigh University engineering graduate, has a long history of tinkering with scrap equipment, particularly at automotive plants. Twenty years ago, while employed at Luria Brothers & Co. Inc., he came up with the idea for the ClipPress, a machine that densified sheet steel scrap at stamping plants to minimize the rail freight costs and still provide sheet steel scrap in a form loose enough for electric furnace melt shops. Dearborn, Mich.,-based Ford has the ClipPress at its Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, N.Y., plants, while General Motors Corp., Detroit, runs one at its Lordstown, Ohio, stamping operation.

The RamPress system has been designed to reduce operating costs and minimize plant involvement, Hering said. In other words, it runs by automated systems and doesn't require any workers to load the scrap into the press, an idea that could have strong appeal to automakers, which lately have been working to downsize their employment roles more than their vehicles.

The system is designed to work with existing equipment at a stamping plant, including the material diverters and conveyors. The material handling process is monitored and managed from beginning to end by video surveillance and a fully automated communications network at Ferrous Processing & Trading.

The "sophisticated communications network" monitors current conditions, automatically redirects material handling equipment and initiates appropriate hauler and maintenance notices, Ferrous Processing & Trading said, shifting scrap management responsibilities from plant personnel to trained professionals in the scrap business.

The automation also allows the stamping plant and Ferrous Processing & Trading to adjust the thickness of the wafer to accommodate the needs of various mills. Thus, if an integrated mill wants the first 5,000 tons from a plant, the RamPress can make 20-inch thick wafers. If a mini-mill wins the bidding for any remaining tonnage available, the press can be reprogrammed to make thinner wafers, Hering said.