Slide Show: Heavy Metal
Esco Corporation foundry worker Mark Gomez uses a long-handled rake to remove a layer of unwanted slag from a cauldron of molten steel. Fresh from the blast furnace, this metal will be cast into spare parts for mining industry equipment.
Photography by Daniel Root
In a matter of seconds, the cars, refrigerators and scrap loaded onto this conveyor will be chewed into fist-sized chunks, thanks to Schnitzer Steel’s $14 million shredder, which was installed last summer. It can process 480,000 tons of metal per year
Photography by Daniel Root
Each year, Northwest Pipe’s 150 employees fabricate up to 25,000 tons of steel pipe, ranging from 17 inches to 12 feet in diameter, for heavy-duty water lines, hydroelectric projects and agricultural irrigation systems. These five-foot-diameter pipes
Photography by Daniel Root
Gunderson employs 1,200 workers at its Portland manufacturing plant to bend, weld and grind steel into about 12 railcars a day and up to nine barges a year. The intermodal cars—a design that was conceived at the Portland plant in the early 1980s
Photography by Daniel Root
Esco Corporation, which supplies parts and equipment to mining companies and other heavy industries, employs more than 530 factory workers who churn out 65 tons of steel parts every day—everything from bulldozer blades to school-bus-sized strip-
Photography by Daniel Root
