`Fenway Frank hot dog cooker stainless steel failure`

The exemplar case for "wrong material" — one of the three legs of the Venn diagram of corrosion (material / stress / environment). A Fenway Franks steam-cooker tunnel in Everett, MA, specified as 316 stainless, had replacement parts fabricated in 304 instead. Within weeks, the 2% molybdenum difference produced visible chloride stress-corrosion cracking in the hot, salt-laden steam environment. Tom did the SEM analysis.

Tomorrow I will pass this around. It's too delicate to go around right now, but this came out of a hot dog cooker over in Everett. This is flaking off as we do it here. This is where they make Fenway Franks. The hot dog cooker is a lot bigger than this room. It's a big steam tunnel made out of stainless steel, taller than you or me, not quite the size of a single-car garage. It's a tunnel where they take all these hot dogs and cook them in steam.