electric power to a steel castings plant to adapt the figures which may have been given him as being met in some other installation.

We have in Detroit three electric furnaces at the present time. One of them, for instance, over a ten-day run under certain conditions produced a very good quality of alloy steel on an average current consumption of 480 kilowatts per ton, which included not only the furnace itself but the lighting of the plant and the train motors and other incidental power. The meter was on the entire plant. Another plant in Detroit which is manufacturing steel castings from cold scrap consumes between 800 and 850 kilowatts per ton. Now, this is no reflection on the efficiency of that particular furnace. The quality of scrap from which the steel is being manufactured, the quality of steel being produced, which involves refining, will naturally affect the amount of current which it is necessary to use. In the case of a firm manufacturing steel castings, the foundry conditions are perhaps as much responsible as anything else for what seems to be high current consumption. In order to get their steel into the molds hot enough-and they are making automobile castings with some very thin sections which require hot pouring-it is necessary to pour the metal from the furnace extremely hot and the temperature of that steel as it comes from the furnace is probably 300 or 360 degrees hotter than they show for lower current consumption. You can see that it would be very easy for the manufacturer of one furnace to say that he is producing a high-grade refined steel for a certain number of kilowatt-hours per ton, which in comparison with the man who does not refine to a great extent, and who is using 850 kilowatt-hours per ton, would make it look as though his furnace was the logical furnace for any one to install. If any of you are contemplating the installation of an electric furnace it would be mighty wise to find out what the scrap market is, and what quality of steel you are producing, and then look around for somebody who has something like comparable conditions.

Another matter. It strikes me as being rather poor policy for the National Electric Light Association to stand sponsor for the issuance of material or reading matter which is more or less an advertisement of various forms of furnaces. In this report, for instance, one furnace, the Rennerfelt, which has been very successful abroad and which has, I believe, eight installations in

this country to date, receives no mention whatever. One of the firnaces mentioned as being quite successful, I know of as in operation at one place only The comparisons have been well placed before us, but as I said before, the question whether basic or rehned steel is being manufactured will not only affect the number of kilowatt hours per ton but, on the form of charge which most of us have, a demand rate, will affect the cost per kil watt hour. If a man is melting down a 6 ton furnace and ng anywhere from 1000 to 1200 or 1500 kilowatts, as may seem best during the melting down period, and then drops down to a current consumption of 300 or 400 kilowatts for a few hours for refining, it is going to knock his loud factor a little bit, which will in turn increase the price per kilowatt hour. Those things should ..! be very care1..lly cons dered

The building of non terrous furnaces is another point. I n the the Aax Metal Company is credited with developing a furnace which is based on investigation and designed by Dr. Het I am inclined to think my good friend Clamer of the Ajax Metal Company, would rather resent that statement. He stent considerable time and money developing this furnace and Le has a patent on it in his own name

To go back to my subiect, the brass metal industry affords a wonderful opportunity for the electric furnace We have in Detroit, for instance, one rolling mall which uses at the present time coke fred furnaces. Their metal Jesses during a normal period ran in money to $100000 mg at 12 to 14 cents a poind 26 or 27 cents and they are the material You can easily compute what their metal losses aunt to in dollars The investigations, con lucted at that te on experiment d furnaces in their 'ant provided 'ass that we could get the furnaces to stand up and keep working They stopted on very slight provocation) showed that in the first year they could pay for the total cost of operation of the furnaces plus the total cost of installation on their metai sav 1 g a'one Incident "y at that time t'eir eruit'es were conting them $200) a;eve and they averaged 33 heats At the present time those crucibles cost $13.20 an 1 they get 11 heats T'ent of cru ibles per ton of metal rolled is 15 times what it was at that time, and you can understand why that chap is ca" ng ne

At that time copper was sellToday scrap copper costs them mentally ring about twice

on the 'phone every few hours to find out what the furnace situation is!

The gentleman from Syracuse spoke of the power factor of the furnace. We have in Detroit furnaces of two types, one 2-phase and two 3-phase furnaces of the same type. The lowest power factor we get is about 87. The power factor of the 3-phase furnace runs 93.6 during the melting down period and about 95 during the refining period. The power

factor of the 3-ton, 3-phase furnace, incidentally it is an acid furnace, and is I believe one of the first polyphase acid furnaces in this country, is 98, and this has been brought about by the very careful interlacing of conductors and by special attention to busbar construction and the general design. That furnace is operating very satisfactorily in the same foundry with the 6-ton furnace and they are producing very high-grade castings from it by choosing the scrap necessary to make up the charge from the foundry scrap which has been de-phosphorized and de-sulphurized in the 6-ton furnace. The annual load factor on those two furnaces is approximately 55 or 60 percent. The cost of the metal per ton I am not prepared to state, but it has supplanted the converter process and the saving is so very satisfactory that they are contemplating the addition of another furnace.

MR. JONES: I would like to ask Mr. Crosby if the 95 percent power factor includes any transformer loss; was it at the service terminal or at the furnace terminal?

MR. CROSBY: The power factor was taken at the furnace terminal, not at the primary terminal of the transformer. The reactance of the transformers, however, is about 7 percent.

MR. R. H. KNOWLTON, Philadelphia: In connection with the electric furnace proposition I think it well to mention one point that has occurred to me, which is my understanding, that the real reason for making steel castings electrically is to better the quality. Now if the quality of a steel casting is sufficiently good when made by the open-hearth process, there is no particular reason for making it electrically, and especially as the electrical method is the more expensive, hence if you find in your neighborhood a steel casting firm that is making castings in the open-hearth furnace, and that there is no possibility of their getting more money for the product, and no possibility

of changing the section of the casting, as is frequently the case in railroad products because of the standardization of parts, it is not necessary to feel disappointed when the foundryman does not accept with joy the suggestion that he install an electric steel furnace

MR. H. M. Sr Jons, Chicago: There is one point I would like to see emphasized in this connection. If the central station company is chiefly engaged in selling service, which I believe to be the case, it surely is very much to its advantage that every customer who adopts an electrical process should be entirely satished with it. A piece of electrical apparatus sold to operate on the central station lines should continue to operate. Now in sothe cases it is not so easy to bring about this condition of affairs. If the central station company is not fully informed with regard to the technical details of the process under consideration and considers its duty ended when transtormers and service connections are installed, despite the perfection of its service up to this point the process will fail if the equipment supplied by some one else to carry out the process is not satisfactory The cus tomer is not going to be satisfied and the central station company loses. It not only loses on that particular proposition but all processes of a similar nature are under suspicion in that neigh borhood and it takes them a long time to recover

It certamly as to the advantage of the central station com pany, so far as it is able, to prevent the mstallation of ill advised and improperly planned electrical processes. It seem to me that central station compames should be in a position to act in a consait ng capacity for their customers, especially on electrical processes as new as many of these are In some cases they should go even further Customers are sometimes persiaded by promoters of special types of electrical equ; ment to mist all something that certainly will not work Claims are being na le for electrical equipment of various kinds that are not sibistan tiated in the least, and the customer who tries one of these fleets with no success The thing is a dead tabure and everybody con ne ted with it suffers It it is possible for the central station commany to prevent the installation of such an equipment it certainly is advisable to do so, even if the customer has not asked the company for advice.

In that connection the proposal which has been advanced for a clearing house of technical information along various lines. by which the member companies of this Association can get detailed information in regard to their problems, might well, it seems, be applied to technical problems of this nature. It certainly is in the interest of the whole industry in the long run that no electrical proposition shall go into commercial operation unless it has a good chance to succeed.

MR. CROSBY: I would like to say that in the Detroit practice the operator did not anticipate any additional price for his steel castings. The Detroit automobile trade with a very few exceptions states that the quality of the castings previously made was satisfactory. The electric furnace went into the steel castings plant purely on a cost-per-ton basis, and has been very satisfactory, although the companies are not getting any additional price. They are competing directly with open hearth castings.

MR. GORDON WEAVER, Kansas City, Mo.: I would like to know whether single-phase furnaces are being successfully operated from 3-phase distributing lines and whether the load factors given are monthly or for stated operating periods. I would also like to know what the life of the electric furnace is and the cost of maintenance during active life.

MR. S. J. GATES, Milwaukee: The Milwaukee Company has three single-phase furnaces operating off a 3-phase transmission line. The system from which they operate is, however, independent of the system that is used for commercial lighting and ordinary power installations. It is what is known as a 25-cycle system and is part of a very extensive water-power transmission. system. No ill-effects have been noticed. The installations are all high-tension water-power installations, and the customer supplies his own transformers and switching gear.

MR. CROSBY: In each of these is the first transformer operated on a separate circuit connected to a separate steel plant; is that the idea?

MR. GATES: The furnaces are situated at three different points and, are supplied from different phases of the threephase system. I believe one gentleman spoke about the cost. The Milwaukee Company has for the most part replaced crucible