Review ASM / SME at Tubular Products 01/28/2010

Birmingham SME members invite members from ASM Birmingham to join us for a plant tour at Tubular Products Co. Social time arrival is scheduled for 5:00pm, Thursday, January 28, 2010.

ASM International is a society dedicated to serving the Materials Science and Engineering professions. This is our first opportunity to meet together with this group of professionals from ASM. Let's give them our full support. We are certain to have many interests in common.

Tubular Products specializes in the design, fabrication, and assembly of round and rectangular tubular steel products. Open since 1973, based in Birmingham, AL, Tubular Products Company is a division of Samuel Man-Tech, Inc. Examples of welded assemblies and fabricated components manufactured by Tubular Products include bent tubing, furniture frames, roll bars, canopy supports, frame rails, seat frame components, Engine mount components, and many other precision cut tubing specialty items for industries across the spectrum.

Craig Armstrong, Operations Manager at Tubular, our host is opening the conference room for us to socialize from 5:00 - 5:30p. We'll enjoy light snacks and open conversation. The plant tour should then last for about another hour. Afterwards, we plan to drive together to meet at the Fultondale, Outback Steakhouse for dinner. Please, plan for a $15.00 dinner.

Tubular Products Co.

1400 Red Hollow Road

Birmingham, Alabama 35215

205-856-1300

http://www.tubularproducts.com/

Driving Directions: from I-20/59, take Hwy 79 toward Pinson to Red Hollow Road. Turn left on Red Hollow Road. Take first driveway to the right into the parking lot. Park in the front parking lot, first driveway on the right after turning in. Meet in the front Lobby.

As always, please, remember to bring your PPE - safety glasses. Neither hardhat nor industrial safety shoes are required for this tour. Please, email Blane Vines, blane.vines@bhamfast.com with an RSVP. Brian, Mark, and LaVada are also available to receive your requests.

Sometime during our meeting, we will review our needs for additional Volunteers to step up to assume new leadership roles for 2010. We have considered several opportunities for community participation, including working with the Barber MotorSports IRL event scheduled for April 9 - 11, 2010. Please, consider all suggestions of mutual interest open to group participation. This is your organization, too!

Upon arrival, Rod Dempsey, Reid and several other members from Tubular Products Company walked us through the plant to meet in an upstairs, refinished conference room. Along the way, we passed by most of the production cells and workstations, and we got our first glimpse of the 2nd shift hard at work, manufacturing various jobs for their customers. First glimpse: an incredible amount of production going on inside a clean, modern facilities with many machines and production gear. It's apparant that Tubular competes worldwide to meet the heavy demands for structural tube products.

5:00 - 5:45p we met there in the conference room, introducing ourselves and having light snacks. Members each took a moment to give a brief "30 second standup intro." Then, Blane Vines, our treasurer reviewed several important points, before accepting affirmative votes to accept our SME Chapter 143 2010 Officer volunteers.

Chair - Mark Partyka, Siemens Automation

Co-Chair, LaVada Varner, Alabama Technology Network - ATN

Secretary, Brian Everling, planning to visit Chile for a month

Treasurer, Blane Vines, Birmingham Fastener

Several others SME members, such as Al Hanhauser, Wesley Wolfe, Dewey Duncan, and Guy Carter witnessed the vote, along with our associate friends from ASM.

Blane also reviewed additional, new SME sponsors for the year 2010. Our next blog should show links to our new sponsors. Thank you new sponsors for your support! Then, we talked about several "missions" for 2010.

Rod Dempsey, Project Manager took the floor, reviewing a brief history about Tubular Products, which was opened in 1973 by Charlie Brown & Steve Brown. Today, Tubular Products is a division of Samuel ManTech, a Canadian company. With over 150,000 sq ft inside the plant and over 100 employees, Rod suggested that they're best known for manufacturing "Carrier Coils," aka "large, wire spools for heavy industrial manufacturing."

Several open floor questions led to a better understanding of the various sizes, gages, and types of manufactured products offered at this Birmingham based, tubular manufacturing plant. Then, our hosts walked us about the plant, mingling with production personnel for the next hour. We passed by various cutting machines. We were each amazed to see the number of various dies used amongst manufacturing "just about any type of tube parts requiring additional machining." Another interesting note included watching a specific "rivot hole technique" applied during production.

Thanks, Tubular Products for a great tour! Then, 10-11 of us met for a dinner at the Outback in Fultondale. An excellent evening tour. Hope to see more of you at one of several upcoming tours.

Nucor Steel Tuscaloosa Plant Tour

Nucor Steel Tuscaloosa shut down the plant for our Thursday evening, end of the month tour. As a result, fifteen SME members and guests were allowed to "get close to the equipment" during our tour of the mill.

Our three hosts, Jon, Dave and Johnny welcomed us into their conference room for a brief history of this Tuscaloosa coil and discreet plate mill, along with some light refreshments.

We first climbed the stairs to the top of the mill to see where scrap steel is loaded into the Electric Arc Furnace. We saw the ladle metallurgy furnace that handles 150 tons of newly melted steel. Next in line, we stepped up to the mixing and testing portion of the mill where we were surprised to find that when adding Vanadium, steelworkers throw the whole can full of these precious rocks into the mix. Our tour guide, Jon Walton, let us know that temperatures get extremely hot along the way, beginning at 2300 degrees Farenheit before cooling toward 1000 degrees upon exiting as a finished product, prior to shearing. During production, most of the workers wear heavy, heat protection gear.

We followed the stairs down the path where the steel is poured into the slabcaster. As a rule, Nucor Tuscaloosa generates a standard-sized 5 1/4" slab in order to produce a uniform beginning size for all of their finished coil and discreet plate products. Again, SME members and guests were able to take a closer look at the cooling mechanics of the slabcaster while the mill was shut down. On the other side of the mezzanine, our guides showed us a "from-the-top view" of how the Steckel Mill works these slabs until the desired 5.26" thickness and flatness is achieved. As we made our way into the plate rolling, control room, we viewed monitors showing close-ups of various coil-rolling inspection points. Here, the slab is rolled to the desired coil thickness, then sheared, coiled to a rolled size. At this point, the desired thickness coil has been produced.

Additionally, we viewed the shear lines, the discreet plate lines, and we saw both, finished coils and finished 1/2" to 1 1/2" x 96" x 480" plates. At that time, all of these plates had metric measurements and specific heat and plate numbers written on their edges.

Both, during our introduction and the closing remarks, Dave Reinhold stressed the efforts made for adhering to the highest Safety Standards in the industry. Nucor prides itself on promoting Safety and Environmental Stewardship, while producing some of the highest quality steel products in the world. Dave took the time to answer several of our questions.

We finished our evening with a seafood dinner at Wintzell's. Al Hanhauser a member from the Mercedes Tuscaloosa plant shared one of the more interesting conversations when he introduced us to the new Mercedes SLS Series production vehicles that should rival the Ford Mustang AV-X10. Further, Nathan Cox, from COX MHP, an invited guest from the Mississippi SME chapter suggested that Alabama and Mississippi continue joint tours. Nathan suggested several upcoming Mississippi plant tours that would be of interest to our members.

SME Birmingham members and guests thank NUCOR STEEL for giving us this opportunity to see their Tuscaloosa coil and plate production facilities. We are also thankful for the invitation to come back when the mill is under heavy operation in order to see the steel produced live.