My Trip To A Steel Plant.....

[bpd1151]

Well, I wanted to share with y'all my trip to NUCOR Steel located in Bourbonnais, IL. today.

This was an official work related function, as the purpose of my trip, was to bring old, confiscated guns for melting and/or permanent destruction.

This portion of my responsibilities falls within my Evidence Technician/CSI duties.

Periodically, when our evidence vault is getting near capacity, we'll perform an internal audit, and various items that have been seized, confiscated, used for criminal cases, etc. can be destroyed at some point, depending how the items were received/inventoried, and what their status may be in relation to ongoing court matters, etc..

So, this is my first trip to perform this aspect of the job, and I'll tell 'ya what..... bar none, what a cool experience.

Getting paid overtime for it made it even more rewarding!

All of the workers there were very friendly, very professional, and quite accommodating.

Upon reaching the facility, checking in, and then meeting with our contact, we unloaded several boxes of guns, both long guns, pistols, hand guns, rifles, you name it.....

We got to watch the entire process unfold.

I uploaded 77 pics to my Photobucket account, and placed the images into this album here:

http://s229.photobucket.com/user/bpd1151/library/Trip%20To%20NUCOR%20Steel


I tried to add captions to some of the photos, so rather than post all of the images here (and tie up vital bandwidth space) I just refer you to scroll through the album at your own leisure.

Some of the pics had a little bit of glare from their various computer monitors, as portions of the melting process required us to remain in their control room, behind protective glass.

It was cool as hell though, and an experience I won't soon likely forget.

Here's one image of our boxes, upon boxes of guns loaded up into the "charge bucket".....

This particular bucket held over 60 tons of scrap metal/steel awaiting melting.



Enjoy!

Any questions, feel free to ask.

[EcoBrick Bob]

Were any of them loaded??? LOL!!!!

[bpd1151]

No. Time was taken to remove any and all ammo prior to destruction.

Although I did ask about whether it was necessary if we needed to do that (removing the ammo) and I was told "no".

They wouldn't have even noticed it in the furnace.

They keep the furnace in the range of 3000-3500 degrees farenheit (on average). So any ammo, had there been any, would've been obliterated instantly.

Cool stuff!

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[SHOdded]

Thanks for the pics, Mike!  Always cool to see industrial stuff in action.  The big wheels that keep this world turning

[bpd1151]

NP. It was pretty amazing to see it in person.

I wish I would've brought the video camera with too.....

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[BigPelo]

I have been working in 2 different steel mills (and still do). Funny how they all look alike.

Looks like an 16 feet electric arc furnace with one burner in the slag door, (No ladle furnace?) and a 4 strain continuous casting machine (Danieli is the Roll-Royce of CCM!)

You might what to change some pictures description, electrodes are feed with high current (amperes). There's a huge transformer behind the brick wall near the EAF (right of this picture, you can even see one of the water cooled cable that feeds an electrode holder. )

[bpd1151]

It was so overwhelming all of the info they were throwing at me.

I was doing my best to recall what was what, and label each image correctly.

I do recall them mentioning they had 2 ladels, but I think that portion we were being whisked through cuz some worker in a shiny fire retardant suit had come up to his little booth and was saying (in a rather hurried manner) what his responsibilities were, and that he was stirring, and blah blah blah....

Probably had something to do with their ladels.

I appreciate the corrections. Like I said, it was a very very cool experience, but the info being hurdled at me, I did my best to recall it all.

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[BigPelo]

It was so overwhelming all of the info they were throwing at me.

I was doing my best to recall what was what, and label each image correctly.

I do recall them mentioning they had 2 ladels, but I think that portion we were being whisked through cuz some worker in a shiny fire retardant suit had come up to his little booth and was saying (in a rather hurried manner) what his responsibilities were, and that he was stirring, and blah blah blah....

Probably had something to do with their ladels.

I appreciate the corrections. Like I said, it was a very very cool experience, but the info being hurdled at me, I did my best to recall it all.

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Working in such an environment for 8+ years makes it a second nature to me

I remember we had 2 provincial police officers in the shop to destroy firearms and cannabis plant in 2009. Interesting time for workers too. The two of them got scared when an explosion occurred in the EAF resulting of snow in the scrap bucket. We all knew it was going to explode except the 2 LEO. We had a good laugh