“We’ve been using robots for fixed-point welding for years,” Duke says. What’s different now, he explains, is that the plant has installed a new generation of sophisticated robots designed to assist in the production of truck trailer cross members — a part Steel of West Virginia manufactures millions of every year.
“When they’re completed some cross members are galvanized, and it’s great. We now have that facility down at Wurtland,” he says. “But the majority of them are wax coated. Why wax them? Think about it. Those cross members are underneath the truck where rocks come up and hit them. A hard coating, an enamel coating, would chip. A wax coating self heals. So we have a wax coating line. We’ve had it for decades and probably put close to 55 million cross members through there.”
Until now the cross members had to be moved on and off the line by hand. Now the robots have taken over that task.
“We’ve had a team working on this for five years and have developed robots that can load and unload the cross members at a significantly higher and safer rate. During this five years, the cost of the robots has fallen dramatically and the software to operate them has become much more user friendly.”
Duke credits Assistant Plant Engineer Roger E. Hutchinson, along with Scott Boggs, superintendent of fabrication, and Keith Perry, electrical technician, with figuring out how to put the robots to work at the Huntington plant.
Duke says he’s also excited about another new development, one involving Steel Ventures Inc, an affiliate of Steel of West Virginia. The Kentucky affiliate has opened a $16 million, state-of-the-art galvanizing facility in Wurtland, Ky. It will allow the company to coat a variety of products including truck trailer cross members, I-beams, guardrail posts, complex fabricated assemblies and parts.
The plant will receive steel from Steel of West Virginia’s Huntington facility, as well as other businesses and plants in the surrounding region.
“What that means is that this plant here will have more work,” Duke says. “Until now we had to contract out the work to galvanizers across the United States and the logistics of that were unbelievable. Now the work can be done at Wurtland.”
Steel of West Virginia is what the steel industry calls a “mini-mill.”
Mini-mills use electric arc furnaces to produce recycled steel from scrap metal that otherwise would end up a landfill somewhere. The steel is then fabricated into beams, channels and other specially designed sections.
In addition to truck trailer cross members, the plant produces a wide variety of specialty shapes used in a variety of industries. Included are mast sections and hanger bars for forklifts; frame sections in off-highway equipment; structural beams for guardrail posts, in solar farms, and for recreational vehicles; light rail applications (crane rail and mine rail), and bulb flats used as hull stiffeners in shipbuilding.
Steel of West Virginia and its predecessor companies have been producing steel in Huntington for 90 years. From 1909 to 1956 the plant was operated by the Schonthal family and known as the West Virginia Rail Mill. From 1956 until 1982, the plant was owned by H.K. Porter, which operated it as Connors Steel.
In 1982, local private investors purchased the plant and renamed it Steel of West Virginia. What started out as a three-acre facility now covers 42 acres between 14th and 20th streets, adjacent to the Marshall University campus. Its buildings incorporate more than 500,000 square feet.
In 1998 Roanoke Electric Steel Corp. purchased Steel of West Virginia. It operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Roanoke Electric Steel Corp. until April 12, 2006 when Steel Dynamics Inc. purchased Roanoke Steel and its subsidiaries. Steel of West Virginia is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Steel Dynamics.
The company has 525 employees. “We’re not actively recruiting now,” Duke says. “But we’re always on the lookout for skilled electrical technicians, industrial technicians and millwrights – positions that can be hard to fill. West Virginia clearly needs to establish better skill training programs for the state’s workforce.”
|
