Master thesis: Uppsetting of ingots, Hofors

What do you get?

You will be a part of a company doing the right thing because its right, that already today has a world-leading CO2 position and is doing its best to create a sustainable society.

Ovako is an employer for you who likes the smaller organizations efficient decisions and the larger organizations security. At oVako you can expect an energetic and forward-leaning place of work, with open discussions, good camaraderie and great organizational drive. As an employee you get (among other things)

• A workplace with focus on employee health, safety and wellbeing
• Great personal responsibility and freedom to how you solve your tasks
• A culture that likes to be challenged and welcomes new ideas that improves
• Ability to work in a dynamic environment with engaged and experiences coworkers

Background and description

Ovako Sweden AB, Hofors has ingot casting in two different ingot types; the first one and the most common weighs 4.2 tons while the second one weighs 8.4 tons. Depending on customer requirements and application, the ingots are rolled into bars or billets, forged into bars or forged-rolled into bars of different dimensions. This work pertains to forging process and forged bars. The forged materials, i.e. larger dimensions, often have customer requirements that the reduction ratio between initial and finished dimension needs to be 3:1. The goal is to investigate whether upsetting of an ingot prior to forging a bar can give or improve the inner quality of steel and hence be able to move volumes from the larger ingot to the smaller ingot by fulfilling the area reduction of 3:1. The production flow of 8.4 tons ingot is a bottle neck with a specific maximum capacity per week. Larger volumes for the 4.2 tons ingot will therefore ease this bottle neck thereby improving our production flow and productivity. It is also of great interest to investigate the inner quality of steel when upsetting an ingot.

The project will include the following:

• A detailed plan of the industrial trials and laboratory investigations
• Industrial trials in the forging shop
• Planning of sampling plan
• Laboratory investigations (not to be perform by self, but possibility exists of performing certain characterization for example microscopic investigations if the candidate is willing to gain some hands-on experience)
• Comparison and compilation of laboratory results
• Planning of next steps

Research question and purpose

Can the inner material quality (porosity, carbide banding, micro inclusions, structure etc.) of the forged steel bars be improved by upsetting an ingot prior to forging?

Your profile

Expected skills to be gained at the end of this thesis work

• Metallurgy/hot working
• A good understanding for metal working particularly forging process
• Minitab skills (multivariate data analysis)
• Skills in Six Sigma methodology for instance DOE (Design of Experiments)
• Materials characterization (microscopy)

Other desirable skills

• • Swedish speaking and writing skills are favorable
  • Motivation and curiosity to work in a dynamic industrial environment
    
    

Information & other

Compensation

Ovako will compensate you for completed master thesis corrsponding to a value per "högskolepoäng".

We can also in most cases assist with accomodation during the time you are performing your master thesis with us.

Ovako will support with travel to and from our sites for interviews, eventual trips back to the university for meetings with supervisor and equivalent.

Recruitment

Selection will be ongoing and during the process you will get the chance to meet potential supervisors, relevant managers and stakeholder. The process will include ability tests, interviews and references.