Article: Michigan Smelter Operations - Houghton in 1934

Reprinted from the Escanaba Daily Press, August 24, 1934

Let us take a trip through one of the smelters. We arrive at the Michigan Smelter in Houghton with our guide and watch the trainload of copper nuggets and finer copper being dumped overhead into bins. Occasionally our eyes see a glint of silver and we are reminded that silver was mined extensively in Michigan when the price was right. The silver is associated with copper in several of the Michigan mines.

From the upper bins their copper is carried ins mall loading cars to the furnace and dropped in at the roof or top of the furnace. Great flames fed by a stream of pulverized coal blown into the furnace attack the mass of copper metal and soon it is reduced to the molten state. Rabbling begins, that is, air is inducted into the mass through a pipe held by the smelterman. This oxidizes the impurities which float to the top and also prepares the copper for its final pouring.

A small mount of iron oxide, limestone and silica or sand is introduced to balance the melt so that it will flow nicely and also acts as a flux which naturally accomplishes this. After the period of rabbling is finished the copper is run from the melting furnace to the refining furnace, a few feet away, and the final refinement takes place. At the moment of final pouring a stir around the front of the furnace shows the workmen getting rods, clay balls and troughs ready.

Poured Into Molds

A circular machine much like a merry-go-round has the farms attached into which the copper will be poured; and the machines rotated to eventually dump the bar of copper into water where it cools and is conveyed.

We hear the head smelter call "Ready" and the sparkling stream of molten metal is poured into the moulds. The blazing light plays on our faces, the heat is intense. This goes on the machine rotating and dumping the blocks or ingots of copper as fast as they can be poured or run. very soon, two hours perhaps, the melt is run and preparations are on the way for another melt. Men load the cooled ingot's on cars and the copper cars are wheeled out to the yard ready for shipping.

About this time along comes an electric engine pushing the big slag pots out to a dump where the glassy slag, live lava, is dumped over the pile as refuse.

"Where does all the copper go?", you ask the guide. Some goes to the wire mill, to the brass foundries, to plumbing houses, electrical supply manufacturers, machine companies, auto companies and a thousand and one other places. We call that part "fabrication of copper," or getting it ready for commercial use.

"What part has the state in this program?" The state is interested in the welfare of the people and through its institutions the College of Mining and Technology research work is carried on to try to develop better and cheaper means of copper separations and to increase or develop new uses for copper. For instance, research is being done under the Department of Metallurgy in alloying iron with copper to make a better cast iron and to use copper in the process.

Research Needed

Copper tubing for plumbing purposes is being used. The United States could buy much copper for military stores and have it on the lot ready and it could still be in use. The iron industry of Michigan under the pressure of men who demand from their engines the maximum efficiency, is trying to find means of benefitting iron ore so that it can be concentrated cheaply, to compete with cheaper ore taken from open pit mines and which is fast disappearing. Many times, we the people in our ignorance of technical things, fail to realize that the appropriation for researches at other colleges may mean being repaid a thousand times over when a discovery is made.

When depressions strike us we think only of cutting out those things which at thee times we think are nonessential, eventually finding that our resources are gone and that investigation paid for could probably keep the ball a-rolling and industry carried on much longer. Good men are worth good pay. Good schools and colleges are worthy of good support because they supply our engineers and research men, who develop our industries. If you wish to know more about research of iron and copper as well as other mineral resources, ask the men at the Michigan Tech exhibit.

Gold is found in Michigan but needs development. At the present price of $3 an ounce, how nice it would be if Michigan could develop some paying goal mines.

From the Escanaba Daily Press, August 24, 1934