Sheffield Forgemasters announced a breakthrough in the industrialization of electron-beam welding (EBW) for thick-section materials. Using EBW, the company weld-joined two 200-mm-thick (8-inch-thick), 3-meter-diameter (9-foot-diameter) forged vessel sections of nuclear-grade steel. The weld, equivalent to approximately 10 meters (32 feet) in length, was completed in a single pass and in a dramatically short timeframe. The weld was completed in 140 minutes with no reportable defects shown in preliminary nondestructive testing (NDT). A weld of this kind would typically take months and include numerous stages of NDT and heat treatment.

Here is a complete list of all the feature articles that appeared in the pages of FORGE magazine in 2021. The month each article appeared in is included. All articles are hyperlinked for your convenience.

American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM) secured multiple next-generation full-size truck front and rear axle programs with global OEM customers. These contracts, including a previously announced award in early 2021, are expected to generate more than $10 billion of lifetime revenues from mid-decade to beyond 2030. 

ArcelorMittal confirmed with the government of Ontario its plan for a $1.4 billion investment in decarbonization technologies at ArcelorMittal Dofasco’s plant in Hamilton. The investment will reduce annual CO₂ emissions at the facility by approximately 3 million metric tons, which represents approximately 60% of emissions. This means the Hamilton plant will transition away from the blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace (BOF) steelmaking production route to the direct reduced iron (DRI)/electric-arc furnace (EAF) production route. The project is scheduled to be complete by 2028.

United States Steel Corp. broke ground in Osceola, Ark., on the company’s next-generation highly sustainable and technologically advanced steel mill. According to U.S. Steel, the $3 billion steelmaking facility will be the most advanced in North America and largest private project in the history of Arkansas. The plant will be adjacent to U. S. Steel’s Big River Steel, and the two facilities will be known as Big River Steel Works. The facility is expected to bring 900 plant jobs to the area, along with thousands of construction jobs. It will include two electric-arc furnaces (EAFs) with 3 million tons per year of advanced steelmaking capability, an endless casting and rolling line and advanced finishing capabilities.

It is not news that automotive industry is trying to reduce the overall weight of its final products – vehicles. One commonly accepted way to achieve this goal is to look into material weight reduction. In other words, build parts as strong as normal but with lighter materials.

United States Steel and Carnegie Foundry, a robotics and AI studio, jointly announced a strategic investment and partnership. The two Pittsburgh-based companies will work to accelerate and scale industrial automation driven by advanced robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Carnegie Foundry will use this investment to commercialize and scale its industrial automation portfolio of robotics and AI technologies in advanced manufacturing, industrial robotics, integrated systems, autonomous mobility, voice analytics and more.

Do you wonder which articles get the most attention on our website? Every year we publish around 25 feature articles, and at the end of the year we gather statistics to see which ones get the most page views. So, without further ado, here are the five most-viewed articles in 2021 on www.forgemag.com based on page views. This ranking applies only to articles published in 2021.

Nucor Corp. reached agreements to acquire a majority ownership position in California Steel Industries (CSI) by purchasing a 50% equity interest from a subsidiary of Vale S.A. and a 1% equity ownership stake from JFE Steel Corp. (JFE). The company will be a joint venture between Nucor and JFE. CSI is a flat-rolled steel converter with the capability to produce more than 2 million tons of finished steel and steel products annually. The company has five product lines, including hot rolled, pickled and oiled, cold rolled, galvanized and ERW pipe.

Using the metaphor of cooking a steak to its desired level of “doneness,” this article examines the difficulties involved in “cooking” forging billets in induction coils to their most uniform level of completion.