A stainless-steel plate mill receives raw stainless ingots from the company’s overseas parent company for processing. The ingots usually are about 4 ft. wide, 12 to 18 in. thick, and approximate 12 to 16 ft. long. They use a furnace to heat the ingots to a cherry-red state and then use a rolling mill to flatten them down to ½ to about 1½ in. thick.
Once the plate reaches the desired thickness, a straightening machine grabs both ends and pulls hard enough to eliminate all the waves produced by the rolling process until the plate lays perfectly flat. The last operation is to load the large sheet in a shear and trim it into 8-ft. by 20-ft. sheets.
