`US Navy Japan steel mill visit and HSLA technology transfer`

Tom's trip to Japan to study HSLA accelerated-cooling technology for Navy and Japanese steel companies. Background to the HSLA-65 story.

The point is, you can go to higher strengths, but it's going to cost you money. They wanted to go to 65 ksi with high-strength low-alloy steel technology, where you cool the steel as it comes off the rolling mill, red hot. You can't quench it in water, but if you spray it — more than a mist, like a garden hose sprayer, uniformly — you can cool it more rapidly. You can keep the grains from growing as big while it's red hot, and you can get 65 ksi. That's high-strength low-alloy steel. You don't have to put as much alloy in there because you're using fine grain size — could be a hundred times finer grain size. This is what I went over to Japan to see if I could learn from the steel companies. Japan and the Navy wanted to invest in this.