Melting ductile iron in an electric arc furnace

Summary

This report gives a procedure for making electric-furnace ductile iron that is recommended for at least one good reason—it has worked for us. There is nothing unique about our methods except the fact that ductile iron is produced in a neutral lining along with steel and several other kinds of alloys. Quality on each alloy has been maintained not only as measured by our own quality testing, but by the standard of field performance.

The ductile iron is made under a slag just fluid or basic enough to keep the furnace bottom clean, and not too fluid to attack the neutral lining. No profound rationale has been given on furnace or ladle slags. Slag chemistry is complicated by the fact that a slag is a mixture and varies from spot to spot; it is further complicated by difficulty of analysis. The slag chemistry given here is nominal—the summary of many analyses, and serves the purpose of describing our process.