Alabama aluminum foundry freeze-up

Phone call to Tom as junior faculty (~1978). Foundry's 2-foot deep aluminum melting pot froze after a day-long power outage; Tom couldn't help.

Now let me finish with a story. Thirty-five years ago as a young faculty member, I got a phone call. These crank phone calls always come to the junior faculty — they pass it down from headquarters. The guy says he had a problem, he needed to cut some aluminum. I said, "well, what kind of aluminum?" "Well, we're in a foundry, we just have some aluminum casting." I said, "well, there are band saws." He said, "I don't think a band saw's going to work." "Why not?" "Well, what we've got is pretty big." "How big?" "About 2 feet thick." I said, "there are band saws that'll cut something 2 feet thick." "Well, it's going to be hard to get in there." "What do you have?" It turns out he was in Alabama, he had an aluminum foundry, and he had a melting pot of aluminum about 2 feet deep. They lost their electrical power for a day and his pot froze. It's buried partway in the ground with all this ceramic around it — a little hard to get in there. I was the young assistant professor, didn't know how to do it, and I wasn't of much help to him.

Alabama foundry loses power for a day; holding pot solidifies 2 feet of aluminum; can't be flame-cut due to protective oxide. Years later Tom learns from Alcoa's Peter O'Brien that the standard remedy is to call a specialist in Pittsburgh who blows it out with explosive charges.

The first year I was on the faculty — you know the little short door, 8-137, as you go around the corner? That was my first office as a faculty member. I'm sitting in the office and I get a phone call from some guy in Alabama who worked in an aluminum smelting shop — actually it's an aluminum foundry — and they had a big holding pot for the aluminum. He calls up and says, I'm trying to get some advice on how to cut aluminum. I said, well, you can saw it, it's not hard to saw. He says, no, that's not going to work. I said, you can plasma cut it. He says, no, I've got something pretty thick. I said, how thick is it? He says, about 2 feet.