Steel delamination,have you ever seen it before?

Before I retired the cement plant maintenance supervisor (an excellent marksman/re-loader) had a lamination problem when he tried to open a hole in a cement slurry storage tank prior to repairs. The first of 4 shots went about 3/16 to 1/4 into the steel. the remaining shots enlarged the hole to about the size of a quarter but no deeper. I felt a shaped charge would do the job but was unsure about the piping and pumps being able to withstand an instantaneous but brief overpressure. Never pushed the issue. Routine procedure was to either unbolt a big door (large enough for a 1.5 yd. loader) or work a drainage hole with oxy/act torch. either way led to the employees getting well soaked with slurry. Not sure why a 8 or 10 inch flange would not have worked.
Have a good day
Ray
 
Saw something very similar when in tech school years ago when one of the students made a pair of parallels and didn't anneal them after heat treat. He had just ground them and they started to show crack lines with in minutes they all cracked apart. Looking much like the wood splittering.

Jim
 
eugene13 said:
Certain types of steel will form a "pipe" as the ingot cools, if the ingot is rolled into a finished product the defect will appear as a lamination. I don't know how common this problem is now days as most everything is continuous cast, but back in the day as much as the top third of an ingot would have be scrapped in order to get a good slab.
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We bought some big buck barrel quality steel from Washington state and the shipping was as much as the steel! We cut off 1.5" to avoid any issues with the sheared end and started drilling a barrel blank. There was a funny sound during the drilling. Reamed OK and then pulled the rifling button through it. It was cracked!!! One third of the barrel was junk and I sure would not trust the rest. We looked at the sawed end of the remaining bar and there was a crack from the center out to the surface, Rejected the whole thing and contacted the seller. They were aware of the issue and refunded the whole amount including shipping. We made high dollar duck decoy weights with a lot of it and scraped the rest. We got lucky and recovered our $1000 investment. It appears even good reputation sellers can get junk steel.
 
Cactus Farmer said:
We bought some big buck barrel quality steel from Washington state and the shipping was as much as the steel! We cut off 1.5" to avoid any issues with the sheared end and started drilling a barrel blank. There was a funny sound during the drilling. Reamed OK and then pulled the rifling button through it. It was cracked!!! One third of the barrel was junk and I sure would not trust the rest. We looked at the sawed end of the remaining bar and there was a crack from the center out to the surface, Rejected the whole thing and contacted the seller. They were aware of the issue and refunded the whole amount including shipping. We made high dollar duck decoy weights with a lot of it and scraped the rest. We got lucky and recovered our $1000 investment. It appears even good reputation sellers can get junk steel.
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In my experience it depends where the streel is made mare than the local supplier. I've only ever seen it in Chinese made steel, which unfortunately all the cut price merchants supply. I would bet that the steel inquestion was not made in USA, UK, Germany, Australia, and probably a couple of other countries to boot. Most likely from China, India, and quite a few others including Eastern European, South American and Asian, except Japan and probably south Korea.
 
Same here with Some chineese suppliers. Somtimes even airbubbles in the Carbon steel they sell. But given the price they do and Some of those steel tools I use rarely then I buy from them. Otherwise as earlier mentioned from the high industry countries.


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I had some steel out of Canada that came unlaminated. with more inspection I
found layers of glass in the steel.
 
KBeitz said:
I had some steel out of Canada that came unlaminated. with more inspection I
found layers of glass in the steel.
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I wonder if that was some sort of flux residue?

Stuart
 
During the 70s working at a shipyard they bought a bunch of foreign steel (Japanese, Chinese?) that would sometimes delaminate when bent or rolled but we would also find pockets of sand in it as it was being welded. Hit one and it would just blow a hole where you where welding.
 
We Have the same problem here in Australia. Big box hardware stores, sell poor quality steel. Flat or round bar and angle iron in particular are all rubbish. problems with welding, won't bend properly and also hard spots when cutting.

We are a modern island nation of 25m people, yet we have stopped making things here. We used to build cars and trucks here, but no more. We also used to build ships, all gone, we used to build trains, trams ( trolley cars) washing machines fridges, TV's etc, now all gone everything is imported.

Over the last 40 year we have gone from the lowest unemployment in the modern industrialised world to one of the highest. The skills are being lost as people reach retirement age, no new ones being trained.
 
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