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Industrial photography of the the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works
The Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works is a full-cycle metallurgical production, the flagship of domestic ferrous metallurgy.
All necessary operations, from ore preparation to steel production, are performed at the works. About 20,000 persons are employed at the works, and another 40,000— at other enterprises of the group. The Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works occupies a territory with a total area of over 11,000 hectares and continues to develop.
The studio was invited for image-building industrial photography of the works. For the whole day, we immersed in the working atmosphere of the renovated and upgraded metallurgy giant. We photographed in five workshops to show how cast iron is born.
Cast iron is an iron alloy with carbon, silicon, manganese, sulfur, and phosphorus. To obtain it, raw materials are loaded into the upper part of a blast furnace. At 1,200 degrees Celsius, they sink and melt, thus turning into cast iron. Cast iron exits the blast furnace through refractory holes in the tap hole. The tap hole is to be tapped. The molten metal flows through a system of chutes across the entire shop to be loaded into ladle carriers.
The in-house rolling mill produces sheets and coils of steel of popular grades. Including high-quality steel sheets for Russian vehicle building. To improve steel quality, rolling production has been upgraded over the past two decades, with all obsolete mills replaced. Construction of a complex for producing thick-plate products (Mill 5000) is being completed at the Works.
We also made portraits of the Works employees. The blast-furnace shop employs specialists responsible for the quality of smelting, for example, stock house machine operators and stove tenders. The most important person in the workshop is the furnace attendant. He is a professional who controls the process of smelting and releases cast iron from the blast furnace at proper moment. It is him who works immediately near the blast-furnace, where liquid iron accumulates for five hours. The genre of portraits of professionals is one of our favorites in industrial photography. At the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, we had an opportunity to photograph high-class specialists at work, surrounded by modern equipment and flows of molten metal.
We photographed the legendary Rolling Mill 4500. This KRUPP machine provided armor for half of Soviet tanks during World War II. Today, the estimated capacity of the mill is 150,000 tons per year. It produces high-quality thick sheets known throughout the world. We took a series of photographs of this great mill; we tried to show the scale of production in the TSR (thick sheet rolling) workshop.
The combination of the giant blast furnaces and rolling mills with state-of-the-art automation and control tools creates the unique atmosphere of Magnitka, which we captured in photographs taken during the day.
