[SEL] cable plowing now Furnace Power

[Curt]

Rick,
With E channel Ajax copper furnaces you _never_ shut them down. Once the 
copper solidifies, the channel will seperate and the circuit is broken, 
rendering the furnace (and the 30,000# of copper in it) useless.
When Duke says it time to shut down, we put the furnaces in low power 
(maintains temperature only) and put them on the generator. Yeah it 
expensive to feed all the diesel fuel for hours, but being able to buy 
power at 4 cent/kw-hr year round is worth it. The penalties for not 
getting below the agreed kw-hr usage are staggering. I believe it is an 
additional 29 cents/kw-hr! At just 4 cents/kw-hr we have a monthly power 
bill of $70,000. You can see what an additonal 29 cents would do to a 
bill! Staggering.....
The 8 hours is the process of starting the casting line back up. In 
other words getting the copper rod to come up vertically out of the 
furnace, thru the water cooled coolerbody, bend 90° and into the rolling 
mills. We are running 2 lines and are casting between 3.5 to 4 million 
pounds of copper each month.
Curt

Rick Rowlands wrote:

> Curt,
>
> I ran my induction furnace today.  kinda felt bad adding that 
> additional 75 KW of load to the system but bills must be paid.  Three 
> heats in four hours is a new record for me.  I have a lawn sprinkler 
> under the cooling unit. When the water temp gets above 108 degrees I 
> turn it on for a few minutes and the water temp drops back down to 
> about 98 degrees and slowly climbs up over about 20 minutes or so.
>
> Does it take 8 hours to get the metal in the channel furnaces back up 
> to pouring temperature?
>
> Rick
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Curt" <curt at imc-group.com>
> To: "The SEL email discussion list" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 1:16 PM
> Subject: Re: [SEL] Nice Wheels/ cable plowing
>
>
>> Ya know Arnie, I've wondered if this was the case even with much less 
>> expensive gas engines. Take a 8 or 10 HP saw rig. That's 4 or 5000 
>> pounds of iron to pay for. In a few of days you can saw a winter's 
>> worth of wood. I could see where a group of farmers would have bought 
>> one and used horses to pull it from one farm to the other in a 
>> cooperative arrangement.
>>
>> Knowing the size of the team of men required to run and support a 
>> steam traction engine, I suspect you are spot on about the 
>> cooperative effort.
>> Curt
>> P.S. I'm outta here in an hour of so. Duke Power just shut us down 
>> due to excessive power consumption. We've got 30 minutes to get below 
>> a kw-hr consumption rate and this means shutting the plant down and 
>> putting the furnaces on generator for the next 6 hours or so, 'till 
>> the household A/C usage subsides a little. Second or third shift will 
>> have the pleasure of starting the casting lines back up. That's about 
>> an 8 hour process. Later.....
>>
>> Arnie Fero wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Curt,
>>>
>>> Rather than an individual farmer buying two traction engines and the 
>>> cable
>>> plowing rig, I wonder if it might have been done on a local collective
>>> basis?  Maybe a couple of entrepreneurs who went farm to farm and 
>>> did the
>>> cable plowing?  Perhaps something like what was done with threshing?
>>>
>>> See ya,  Arnie
>>>
>>> Arnie Fero
>>> Pittsburgh, PA
>>> fero_ah at city-net.com
>>>
>>> On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, Curt wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Have been to several steam shows here in the states and, to date, have
>>>> yet to see a steam traction engine with a cable setup under the belly.
>>>> So it might have been done, but it was sure on small scale. In our 
>>>> early
>>>> culture of entrepreneurial / no government involvement, what farmer
>>>> could afford to buy 2 traction engines!? It would be interesting to 
>>>> know
>>>> the extent that government subsidies were involved in cable plowing in
>>>> Australia.
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> SEL mailing list
>>> SEL at lists.stationary-engine.com
>>> http://www.stationary-engine.com/mailman/listinfo/sel
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> SEL mailing list
>> SEL at lists.stationary-engine.com
>> http://www.stationary-engine.com/mailman/listinfo/sel 
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> SEL mailing list
> SEL at lists.stationary-engine.com
> http://www.stationary-engine.com/mailman/listinfo/sel
>
>