Clean steels testing

Corus, the international steel company, has invested in a new Ultrasonic Testing Laboratory to enable the further enhancement of the company’s production capabilities of high quality, ultra-clean steels for the automotive bearing market.

The new laboratory-testing unit, part of on-going investment at Corus’ engineering steel business at Rotherham, allows the company to more accurately assess the cleanness of steels produced.  Equally important, as part of the group-wide Continuous Improvement Programme, it provides feedback to make refinements to the processing route on a regular basis.

Traditional methods for testing the cleanness of steel use a combination of ultrasonic and microscopic examination.  Although this facilitates the testing of large volumes very quickly, the system only picks up inclusions with an ultrasonic echo down to 1.2mm in size.

Using the new ultrasonic testing system, Corus can now faster and more accurately determine the size and distribution of inclusions in the steel, down to an echo of 0.1mm in size, and also trace the source of the inclusions within the manufacturing process.