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Description

Crane inside factory.

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Comments (2)

Martyn Leonard Alderman's profile picture
This picture is wrongly labelled and is fact the scrap baling grab - known as the Mustang. Offcut aluminium scrap from various processes e.g shearing, slitting & edge trimming was accumulated and tipped in the baling shed. The Harris hydraulic baler ( as used to crush cars in an automotive scrap yard) would be fed by this grab and it then baled the aluminium scrap into units about 24" x 36" that would be fed to the melting furnaces for recyling. Process yields were of the order of 60-70% depending upon product form, so about one third of all metal melted in the Rheola Foundry passed through the baler on its way back to the furnaces. A large proportion of the Rheola product was aluminium circles for lighting, holloware and beer barrels where maximim yields would be 66% dictated by the skeleton remaining after the circles had been blanked or rotary sheared.
Martyn Leonard Alderman's profile picture
The second picture in this group shows the Brightside Reversing Hot Breakdown Mill at 80" width that could roll DC cast slabs of 14" thickness down to 1/2" to 1" thick. The hot mill blank would then pass down the hot mill table ( behind the mill stand in this picture) to a 3 stand warm tandem mill which was capable of taking the blank down to 3-8mm thick coil for subsequent cold rolling or cutting up as plate/shate. The third picture shows a works diesel locomotive from the 1940's era I believe when the plant was still operating as an aluminium smelter before cheaper Canadian metal made smelting obsolete and the plant concentrated on rolling. There appears to be a stack of 20-25kg remelt ingots to the right of the picture which might have been produced at that time. Aluminium smelting requires large amounts of electricity, and the original plan had been to use locally produced electricity, generated with local coal supplies. However World War II broke out before the generators were imported from Switzerland, so the smelting plant attempted to run using national grid electricity, and this was discontinued by 1943.

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