Manufacturing process

At Finkl Steel - Sorel, our 45-ton electric arc furnace gives us the flexibility to custom-melt a wide range of carbon, alloy, mold and tool steel grades. At this step, we build a charge of solid steel scrap material from controlled sources and convert them into a liquid bath. First steps of refining are done once the steel is completely liquid by removing the phosphorus content, an undesirable impurity in steel causing embrittlement. Once this element is in the slag layer floating on top of the liquid bath, we tilt the furnace and remove this layer. After this step, we can increase the temperature in order to transfer or tap into a ladle to move to the refining station or ladle metallurgy furnace.

Our ladle metallurgy furnace or refining station enables us to consistently produce high quality steels with tight control on chemical composition. At this step we will remove sulphur, another impurity causing brittleness. Oxidation control is critical and fluxes are added to capture impurities. This translates into products with improved micro-cleanliness, toughness and isotropic properties. This metallurgical process is key to Finkl Steel`s commitment to supply the highest quality forgings.

At Finkl Steel - Sorel, vacuum degassing technique is used to ensure the lowest hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen levels, resulting in a steel of superior quality.

Ingots

Argon protection,  bottom pouring and bottom filling assures quality ingots weighing up to 43 tons.

Two forging presses maintain the heartbeat of Finkl Steel - Sorel. Our 5000-ton open-die hydraulic press equipped with its wide dies ensures high internal quality and strength even in the largest forgings. With this press, we can produce forgings up to 50 feet long, round sections up to 72 inches in diameter, discs up to 114 inches in diameter and rectangles measuring over 2000 square inches in cross section and up to 90 inches wide.

Our 2000 ton press offers more flexibility. This system runs computer assisted, fully synchronized with the 40 meter-ton rail-bound manipulator. This press offers great predictability of yield, consistency of operation, tight dimensional controls and homogeneity of the forging for parts up to 20 tons. All that quality translate into a reduction in cost and in improved competitiveness in the medium-size product range.

Finkl Steel - Sorel's heat treating facility is among the most advanced in the industry. A number of furnaces, water and polymer quench tanks and cooling systems enable us to heat treat the full range of forged products to the most exacting specification.

Our furnaces, extending from gas fired for applications such as normalizing, annealing and quenching to electric powered for better accuracy during tempering operation, are verified to MIL-H-6875 and API 6A assuring uniformity and consistency of heat treatment.

At Finkl Steel - Sorel, our skilled operators can rough machine all our forgings to customer's dimensional requirements. Our machine shop is equipped with an extensive array of equipment which include medium and large engine lathes, C.N.C. lathes, planer milling machines, vertical boring mills and complementary equipment such as saws, horizontal boring mills and a trepan lathe.

Finkl Steel - Sorel keeps a large stocking program of Mold Steels to supply the plastic injection tooling industry with very short lead time.