Russia’s Uralmash-Izhora Group’s (OMZ) Special Steels operation recently cast a steel forging ingot weighing 124.2 tons at the Izhorkiye Zavody plant in St. Petersburg. The ingot was cast using a siphon method in which molten metal is siphoned up from the bottom of the ingot mold cavity. The relatively non-turbulent mold filling method improves the quality of the steel ingot, which was cast by siphoning metal up into the ingot mold using negative pressure in an argon atmosphere to prevent oxidation. The use of inert argon obviates the need to use a vacuum casting process.