July/August 1993
This fourth installment of our 50th anniversary series offers a look at the past and present of scrap-related equipment, as well as a glance at possible future directions in the field.
BY KENT KISER
Kent Kiser is associate editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling.
From the outside, it looks like any other manufacturing facility: a modern building with wisps of squeaky-clean air emissions drifting from the vents. Storm water runoff—what little there is—is processed by an on-site treatment system before being discharged.
Inside the totally enclosed facility, all operations rest on concrete kept immaculate by a roving sweeping machine. Trucks delivering supplies enter the facility and are weighed and paid by an automated scale/cashier system. The trucks unload their supplies directly onto a conveyor, which whisks the material off through a series of scanning, analyzing, and sorting systems that separate the material into different grades. From there, it's conveyed to specialized processing equipment controlled by just a handful of operators who push buttons to direct the machines' computerized brains. The final product is then given a final quality check by an on-line analyzer before being conveyed into a waiting trailer.
What is this, a scene out of Buck Rogers?
Hardly. It could be the scrap plant of the future—even the near future. Elements of it, in fact, are already in place in scrap facilities across the country, thanks to recent developments in scrap processing, handling, and management equipment. And this equipment continues to evolve, driven by recyclers' perennial need for machinery that is efficient, durable, and fast, as well as by their more-recent needs to increase scrap quality, limit their environmental liabilities, and manage their business data. After all, as one scrap executive says, "it is excellent equipment—probably more than any other thing—that can give a scrap recycler the competitive edge necessary to succeed in today's business climate."
The Way We Were
Of course, equipment has long been important to the scrap industry. In fact, modern processing machinery has done nothing less than help elevate the industry from its days as "small, relatively unimportant man-operated yards to gigantic, mechanized plants whose strategic value to the nation is recognized in both war and peace," wrote Mush Oberman, editor and publisher of Scrap Age, in 1963.
The evolution of scrap-related equipment and processing methods resembles that of the world around it, with steady progress interspersed with occasional revolutionary advances. In the industry's most rudimentary stage, scrap was collected and transported by horse and wagon or railcar, and was prepared—if at all—by cold chisels and hammers, even mattock picks. "This involved sheer brute strength, giving rise to the wisecrack that to be in the scrap business required a strong back and a weak mind," wrote the late Edwin C. Barringer, former executive vice president of the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel—a predecessor of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (Washington, D.C.).
One of the earliest processing advances was the oxygen torch cutter, which, as Barringer described it, "worked a revolution" by enabling recyclers to process large unprepared scrap such as railcars, ships, and structural metals. Still widely employed today, the humble torch marked "the real turning point of scrap from a small and literally junk operation to the stature of a major industry," Barringer stated.
Additional hints of modern technology showed up in the 1930s, when a few other pieces of processing equipment came into use, primarily small presses and electric alligator shears, the latter of which Barringer called "the bread-and-butter machine of the yard." Still, the business remained intensely physical and, by today's standards, primitive. For instance, while some scrap companies operated steam-powered locomotive cranes, magnets, and chain-driven trucks with solid tires to move their material, most had to rely on wheelbarrows and elbow grease.
By the early 1940s, however, scrap processing equipment began to evolve to include machines that were, in most cases, larger, stronger, and faster than those introduced previously. And the equipment caught on. In fact, by the close of the decade, large hydraulic balers, wire-chopping machines, forklifts, and lugger boxes were relatively common in the industry. "The trend to automation was accelerated during World War II when the government called upon the secondary material industry to step up production for the war efforts," noted Scrap Age. By war's end, recyclers had learned that automation could lead to greater profits. "Scrap men were beginning to recognize what equipment officials knew all along: Investment in modern equipment was the only road to survival," Oberman wrote in 1963.
Thus, by the 1950s, the scrap industry had truly entered the "era of automation"—an era that continues to this day—with many equipment advances being made. The first hydraulic guillotine shear hit the industry in the mid-1950s, for instance, and roll-off trailers were offered later in the decade. Perhaps the most momentous development, however, occurred in 1958 when the Proler family of Proler Steel Corp. (Houston) introduced the first automobile shredding system. "The huge plant is expected to revolutionize the entire scrap-handling industry and to make possible important economies in the production of steel with scrap as a basic raw material," declared Scrap Age at the time. The shredder soon nearly eliminated the previous practices of baling and/or shearing auto hulks, and it created a market for car flatteners and boosted demand for front-end loaders.
The early 1960s brought the first guillotine shear/baler combination machine, as well as expanded use of semi-trailers, which were longer and, thus, offered more payload capacity than other hauling containers. Later that decade, slow-speed shear shredders were developed to process materials such as tires, aluminum, paper, and wood.
In the 1970s, scrap recyclers began buying hydraulic crawler cranes in force, and they soon found that these machines needed attachments designed specifically to process and handle scrap. Enter the grapple, introduced in 1973, and the mobile hydraulic shear, brought into the market soon after. This equipment enabled processors for the first time to bring large processing equipment to their scrap, rather than vice versa, and allowed them to shear scrap without having to buy a stationary shear.
Entering the Computer Age
The 1980s heralded a different type of equipment revolution as computers—those miracle machines that process information instead of scrap—began to find a niche in the scrap industry. While some larger scrap players installed computer systems in the early 1970s, the vast majority didn't show interest in them until the mid-1980s, in large part because there were no programs custom-designed for the business until then. Today, in contrast, some computer vendors offer more than 3,500 scrap-specific programs.
Even so, while a high percentage of recycling firms now own some kind of computer, only an estimated 25 to 40 percent have fully computerized their business functions on a companywide system, computer vendors state. "This is because the focus has traditionally been on buying production-related equipment that gives an immediate and visible boost in productivity," explains one executive. Still, systems vendors agree that computers are making fast inroads into the business due to the "hundreds and hundreds" of benefits they offer.
In the office, computers have plugged recyclers into the world of information through on-line data base services that can provide up-to-the-minute commodity market quotes, financial data, and other industry-related information. Computerization has also enabled some recyclers to automate their over-the-phone purchasing business, using voice-mail telephone/computer systems to give daily prices for some scrap. And in terms of data management, computers have helped recyclers record, organize, track, and analyze essential information related to their purchases, sales, inventory, contracts, payroll, and more. The main advantage of this sort of data management is simple, says Ken Cohen, president and chief executive officer of Cohen Brothers Inc. (Middletown, Ohio): "More information helps you make better decisions."
Out in the plant, recyclers are boosting their inventory tracking capabilities by using hand-held computers to read barcodes or radio-frequency tags attached to processed scrap. These identification tags and barcodes can indicate the material's commodity code and name, gross/tare/net weights, and even the supplier. "With this equipment, taking inventory can be as simple as walking around with a hand-held computer that has a cellular antenna, with the bales broadcasting their information to you," explains a computer executive. When used in remote locations, hand-held computers can transmit information back to the recycler's main data base, using a built-in modem.
Computers are also helping recyclers speed over-the-scale transactions and, thus, provide better service. Plant operators can now even install a computer-automated cash dispenser, which not only deters internal and external theft, but also can eliminate the need for a human cashier in certain setups. "Anybody who can apply a high-tech solution to reduce personnel requirements will be a winner," says one computer expert.
This factor seems to be at least part of the impetus behind the expanding use of computers inside scrap processing and handling equipment to make machinery easier to operate, maintain, and service. Some such "intelligent" machines, for instance, can run without an operator, while others allow one employee to run several operations at once, such as controlling a crane feeding a shredder, as well as the shredder itself. Another example of this trend: Many machines now feature self-diagnostic control boards that monitor all functions and let the operator know if there is any problem with the equipment. And equipment increasingly also contains a modem that allows the operator to hook the machine up to a phone line and have it diagnosed long-distance by the manufacturer.
The "Latest-Greatest" Technology
And the advances in scrap-related equipment keep coming. The 1990s have ushered in two new trends, with the most-prevalent being the growing popularity of eddy current magnetic separation systems in shredding operations. Considered by many to be the "latest-greatest" technology, eddy currents are reportedly already up-and-running on more than 50 shredding systems, and in a few short years eddy could become standard equipment on all shredders. Why do shredder operators love eddy so much? Because it extracts salable nonferrous scrap from their residue stream and, by doing so, also reduces the amount of fluff requiring disposal. "These systems cost money to put in, but they're inexpensive to operate, they don't require environmental permits, and they're good," says a shredder manufacturer.
This decade has also found more and more scrap firms purchasing radiation detection equipment, and "indications are that this equipment is really taking off in the scrap market," says one manufacturer. Processors are buying these detectors for two main reasons: to protect their operations and employees from the potential health and environmental hazards of accepting radioactive scrap, and to meet consumer requirements for certification that their scrap is radiation-free.
Pursuing Continuous Improvement
Combine all of these equipment advances, and what do you get? A scrap industry that is as different from its 1900-era incarnation as a Model T is from a Lincoln Town Car. "Scrap operations were junkyards in the early 1900s, whereas today they're manufacturing plants without a roof," observes Noah Liff, chairman of Steiner-Liff Iron and Metal Co. (Nashville, Tenn.). The foundation of the industry's success, and the underlying goal of equipment manufacturers, has clearly been one of continuous improvement. For manufacturers, this improvement has been—and will continue to be—based on four principles that define equipment excellence.
- Efficiency. For scrap recyclers, efficiency means the ability to process more scrap in less time for less money. "The main problem today," Cohen observes, "is that the per-ton cost of processing continues to go up, but margins continue to go down." In response, manufacturers have worked to make their machines more energy-efficient, more productive, and more capable than previous models. Some guillotine shears, for example, are now so large, that they can process whole railcars without using precompression and without requiring any precutting. Other shears save energy by using gravity to feed scrap into the machine rather than an automated compression box. Efficiency has also been improved by making scrap equipment more "operator friendly" and, as noted, by enabling multiple machines to be operated by one employee.
- Durability. In addition to death and taxes, recyclers can count on one other certainty in life: equipment repairs. "After all," Cohen notes, "in many cases you're processing iron and steel with equipment made of iron and steel, so the machine is bound to break down eventually." Still, manufacturers have tried to reduce the downtime and repair costs of their machines by making them stronger and more reliable through such means as using harder steels, reducing the number of moving parts, installing self-diagnostics, and more.
- Versatility. Since scrap-related equipment is often "capital intensive"—that is, expensive—plant operators seek to get as much for their money as possible, which often means a machine that is versatile in terms of handling several different tasks and processing a variety of materials. Manufacturers have responded by creating such machines as shears that can also serve as balers, mobile/portable equipment, shredders that can process all but the heaviest scrap, myriad crane attachments for every purpose, and locomotive cranes that feature hydraulic booms rather than traditional lattice booms, providing a greater reach.
- Safety. Equipment that isn't safe is a liability rather than a benefit to recyclers, so manufacturers have improved on the protective features—such as guards and warning signals—on many machines.
In addition to these "golden rules" of scrap-related equipment, some recent trends have prompted manufacturers to modify existing machines and offer new equipment to help recyclers meet challenges on two new fronts: - Quality assurance. Scrap consumers have been increasingly requiring their suppliers to not only provide higher-quality scrap, but also data that prove quality assurance in the suppliers' processes and materials. "Quality is a tremendous concern," Cohen notes, "and those scrap companies that can guarantee it will be the ones that continue to succeed in the industry." This point has compelled processors to buy equipment that enables them to verify the composition of inbound scrap, produce premium scrap packages, and guarantee the contents of outbound scrap—equipment such as optical emission and X-ray fluorescence spectrometers, atomic absorption units, and other machines that can determine the precise composition of scrap. "The scrap dealer today is as much a metallurgist as a processor," Cohen says, predicting that "in the future, scrap will be marketed more and more on an analytical basis."
The quality concept also extends to the relationship between equipment makers and their scrap recycling customers. As one manufacturer notes, "Much like the auto industry, buyers of scrap-related equipment today are demanding a much higher level of equipment quality and, especially, service quality. Manufacturers that can't provide both won't be in business much longer."
- Environmental compliance. More than ever before, the scrap business is a regulated industry. As a result, recyclers are having to upgrade or install equipment to meet local, state, and federal regulations in terms of air emissions, storm water runoff, and more. To this end, manufacturers have taken such actions as improving hydraulic systems to minimize leaks, creating concrete equipment foundations with retaining walls to hold spills and process water runoff around machines, designing equipment to operate under cover or in an enclosed building, and making machines that run cleaner and quieter.
Buck Rogers, Here We Come
Scrap-related equipment has certainly come a long way in one century. Some recyclers, in fact, such as Alan Jay Perlman, vice president of F. Perlman & Co. Inc. (Memphis, Tenn. ), feel that equipment makers have surpassed their expectations to the point that "it will take most processors years to catch up with the technology that already exists." Even so, manufacturers have no intention of stopping now. "Sure, current equipment is competent," one equipment executive says, "but there's always room for improvement."
Where will scrap-related equipment go from here? In the short term, manufacturers must offer products that can help recyclers address today's unprecedented economic, quality, and compliance challenges. In the long term, several equipment makers predict new revolutionary advances, though one says, "whether these developments will be lasers, cryogenics, or Star Wars, we don't know." Some recyclers say automated scanning and sorting equipment will become more prevalent, while others raise the possibility of robotic machinery being used in some aspects of the business.
One point is certain: As in the past, scrap recyclers will continue to rely on equipment manufacturers to help them remain competitive. "You can't be in this business anymore with antiquated equipment and expect to be competitive," Cohen says. "Scrap operations in the future will have to be different." How different? No one knows for sure, though Joel Denbo, vice president of Denbo Iron & Metal Co. Inc. (Decatur, Ala.), ventures, "What we do in the scrap business today will look archaic a century from now." Perhaps, in fact, the scrap plant of the future will be something, equipment-wise, that even Buck Rogers would envy.
This fourth installment of our 50th anniversary series offers a look at the past and present of scrap-related equipment, as well as a glance at possible future directions in the field.