AK Steel Wednesday announced that employees at its Middletown, Ohio steel plant have set a world record for consecutive heats of carbon steel continuously cast on either a single-strand or double-strand caster.
In a sequence that began on March 6, 2010, crews at the company's Middletown Works cast 2,156 consecutive heats of steel through the plant's double-strand caster. The sequence was ended on May 4, 2010 for a planned maintenance outage. During the 59-day sequence, a total of about 103 miles of carbon steel slabs were cast.
AK Steel's Ashland, Kentucky plant previously held the world record for consecutive heats cast on a single-strand caster. That record - 1,851 consecutive heats - was set on September 26, 2002.