Challenges in Special Steel Making

Special bar quality [SBQ] is a long steel product where an assured quality is delivered by the steel mill to its customer. The bars have enhanced tolerance to higher stress application and it is demanded for specialised component making. The SBQ bars are sought for component making processing units such as closed die hot forging, hot extrusion, cold forging, machining, heat treatment, welding operations. The final component quality of the secondary processing units depends on the quality maintained at the steel maker end along with quality maintained at the fabricator end. Thus, quality control is ensured at every unit process stages. The various market segments catered to by SBQ steel segment is ever growing and is reviewed. Steel mills need adequate infrastructure and technological capability to make these higher quality steels. Some of the critical stages of processing SBQ and the critical quality maintenance parameters at the steel mill in the manufacture has been brought out. (paper)