Sep. 7, 2006 — Charter Steel recently produced the first heats at its new Danieli-supplied steelmaking facility in Cuyahoga Heights near Cleveland, Ohio.

Following the initial heats, tuning of the operations was continued without incident, enabling Charter to continue to ramp up production. At one month after startup, the company had produced billets in the lower-grade range that have now been applied to orders.

Charter’s new state-of-the-art special steel meltshop is designed to support the company's existing rod and bar-in-coil rolling mill at the Cuyahoga Heights facility. The new plant includes a 75-ton EAF, Ladle Furnace, and single-tank vacuum degasser unit. A 4-strand conticaster is designed to cast up to 200-mm square sections, in a large variety of grades ranging from carbon to alloy steels for cold heading, cold forging, specialty spring, bearing, high carbon, and free-machining steels.

The new melting facility will initially produce 350,000 tons/year. Production will be increased to about 700,000 tons/year at a future date.

Charter Steel, a division of Charter Manufacturing Co., is a full service supplier of hot rolled as well as processed steel rod, bar-in-coil and wire and has manufacturing and distribution facilities in Wisconsin and Ohio.