Lucas D. Clemetsen – 2020 Steel Intern Scholar
My internship this summer was at Scot Forge, a large metal forging company located in Spring Grove, Ill., USA, has been an invaluable experience. Specializing in custom open die forging and seamless rolled rings, Scot Forge is 100% employee owned with 1.3 million sq. ft. of manufacturing space among five plants. Working within the metallurgical (MET) lab, I had my first experience of what my future career could look like. The large wealth of material science, metal and industry knowledge available to me at work has allowed me to gain a much deeper understanding of my degree.
Last summer I worked in the mechanical side of the MET Lab machining tensile and Charpy specimens. However, this summer I worked in the non-mechanical side performing various tests for production and laboratory work. Working with an experienced metallographer and two metallurgy interns, I learned techniques on how to expose prior austenite grain boundaries, perform color metallography, and dozens of other laboratory methods.
During the last month of my internship I became interested in color metallography because of the unique and fascinating images it could produce. My intern group became proficient in carrying out daily production tasks allowing us to perform our own informational experiments. Color metallography hasn’t been studied much, so it was really rewarding to see the results turn out well.
Going into this internship I had limited knowledge of how much the steel industry had to offer and my education was limited as I had just finished up my first year of college. However, I now have gained a strong understanding of the steel constituents, microstructure and properties. It has given me numerous connections I will be able to use for the rest of my life and I found a passion that I never knew existed.