Weighing systems have been installed by Drafto Corporation of Pennsylvania, USA into a pair of upper sheave nests for weighing hot metal to improve efficiency at a stainless steel manufacturing works.

The 227t (250 US ton) capacity system generates such data as management of the amount of hot metal left in the electric furnaces, the actual metal weight in the ladles and the hot metal poured into the caster. The instrumentation also helps minimise the slag and metal residue left in the ladles.

After installation, which took two scheduled outages, two months work was needed to commision the equipment, optimising radio communications between the scale instrumentation system and the customer’s computer. Drafto claims accuracy of between plus and minus 0.2%.