2023 Steel Intern Scholarship – Willy Korf
Rebekah A. Smith
From the brilliance of molten iron to the blue light of the electrodes, the “firework” display of sparks, the glowing billets as they travel down from each caster strand and the warm gradient of billets cooling in the rake bed, the melt shop is alive with metallurgy at its finest. I love all of it; but this summer’s internship was not only poetry and energy. I found myself learning more of the support systems, meetings, and endless checking that must be done in order to produce a high-quality product. My internship stretched me and instructed me in some of the more mundane tasks. I appreciate that, too, because it makes me a better person and engineer.
This summer I worked as the melt shop process engineering intern for Gerdau Monroe, Mich., USA. The continued experience in the steel industry was extremely valuable to me as a budding engineer. This summer I grew in my understanding and involvement of the process from scrap to billet, gaining more exposure to areas beyond the electric arc furnace, including the scrap yard, secondary refining station and continuous caster.
Through my internship, I had the opportunity to work alongside engineers from many different disciplines, educational paths and cultural backgrounds. Working with them allowed me to experience diverse ways of approaching problem solving and data analysis and they readily responded to me and helped when they could.
Throughout the summer, I worked on creating weekly production reports for the melt shop improvement team, which allowed me to better understand how the melt shop ran (what is normal vs. not). I experimented with digging into the data and hunting down outlier cases, investing a lot of time into gaining a better understanding of where data in the mill came from, learning a little bit more about how databases work, and practicing applying this understanding to explain certain results. I learned how to sample raw material and ferro alloys, navigate the process for external testing and conduct analysis on the test results. I also implemented a new practice for grade classification of internal scrap. This included defining and writing a standard operating procedure (SOP) and providing training. As part of this project, I visited other departments to learn how internal scrap is generated and handled, which allowed me to understand more about their processes as well. Some of my favorite experiences from the summer included opportunities to get up close to the equipment and to be directly involved in projects that influenced production. I was impressed with the focus on safety, the high emphasis on quality, and the effort that the Gerdau team put forward to ‘raise the bar every day.’
I would like to thank AIST and Gerdau for providing me with this opportunity to expand upon my experience in the steel industry. I have grown personally and professionally; and appreciate the varied instruction and exposure this summer has afforded me.