China’s Shandong Iraeta Heavy Industry Co. recently rolled off a huge seamless stainless steel forged ring, which it claims is the world’s largest. The ring, which weighs 150 tons and measures 51 feet (15.6 meters) in diameter, was manufactured as the key part of a nuclear power unit. The product was developed by the Institute of Metal Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and ordered by the China National Nuclear Corporation. It is expected to play the supporting function in a nuclear reactor vessel to withstand pressure of up to 7,000 tons. The giant steel structure was produced by welding segmented sections into an assembly.

Ellwood Group Inc. of Ellwood City, Pa., will acquire McInnes Rolled Rings, a manufacturer of seamless carbon, alloy and stainless steel rolled rings. The deal is scheduled to close on March 31, and Ellwood expects to run Erie, Pa.-based McInnes independently as a wholly owned subsidiary. Operations at both companies are expected to continue seamlessly throughout the acquisition process. The deal fits Ellwood’s strategy to provide quality metals and custom-engineered components for critical applications around the world.

The forging industry will meet in Cleveland for the third consecutive time at Forge Fair 2019. The new Huntington Convention Center will host the biennial event May 21-23, 2019.

Direct metal deposition (DMD) is a powder jet additive-manufacturing (AM) technique that can be used for low-cost build, repair, hardfacing and reconfiguration of forging dies.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has become a specific topic of interest in the general manufacturing community due to its novelty and projected abilities for ground-up automation.

Do you ever wonder what readers are looking at on our website? Here’s a list of the top 5 articles on www.forgemag.com according to page views in 2018. All are linked for your convenience. Enjoy!

This is a complete list of all the feature articles – by month – that appeared in FORGE in 2018. The page number the article appeared on is included. All articles are hyperlinked for your convenience.

Century Aluminum Sebree LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Century Aluminum Co., announced two expansion programs at its Sebree, Ky., smelter that will increase the smelter’s production of both value-added and secondary aluminum. The programs, which are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2019, will improve the smelter’s product mix by adding approximately 90,000 metric tons of additional billet production to the Sebree casthouse and increase the smelter’s overall output by adding 20,000 metric tons of additional secondary (scrap reprocessing) capacity.

Long Beach, Calif., is perhaps best known as the retirement home of the legendary cruise ship Queen Mary, which is permanently moored there and is currently an operating hotel and museum. But on Sept. 11-12, Long Beach hosted some of the forging industry’s best and brightest technical people, industry professionals, suppliers and educators at what was FIERF’s 32^nd Technical Conference.

In this case study, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is working in partnership with Purdue University Northwest and steel-industry stakeholders to use their high-performance computing (HPC) modeling, simulation and visualization capabilities to optimize blast furnaces in order to reduce emissions and energy use.