A Hamilton lab is helping mark the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7 in a project it says will bring its work “full circle.”
The laboratory, operated by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), is unique in North America – one of the few places that can roll steel from the USS Arizona, one of the battleships that sank during the 1941 attack on the island of Oahu, and help transform it into and USS Arizona Medal of Freedom.
The research center will roll four bars down to sheets from which the medals will be laser cut.
“Six Canadians were part of the crew on the USS Arizona. Five of them died in the attack and the sixth continued to fight another day,” Philippe Dauphin, director general of the CanmetMATERIALS laboratory, told CBC Hamilton.
“So for us, it connects Canada back to its history, it connects the laboratory with its origins, and it is an opportunity for us to remember the period when these forms of destruction were possible and will hopefully come to an end.”
CanmetMATERIALS is inside McMaster Innovation Park on Longwood Road South.
SE: USS Arizona ingot rolling at CanmetMATERIALS in Hamilton:
A USS Arizona bar rolls at CanmetMATERIALS 1:29
According to NRCan, one of the last surviving crew members in Arizona, Lauren Bruner, established a non-profit – the Lauren F. Bruner USS Arizona Memorial Foundation – to honor those on board the ship that morning the Japanese attack on U.S. military installations in Hawaii.
The U.S. Navy provided the foundation steel from Arizona, which has been immersed in Pearl Harbor since it sank, NRCan said, adding that the material is being used to create the medals.
Dauphin said the fund will sell or give the medals to “people who contribute to the fund”, making it “the first and only time” that steel from the ship will be available to ordinary citizens – for $ 1,000 per. pieces, he said.
“[Their] The goal is to remember the 1,177 men who died that morning. ”
Until now, the navy had only made the steel available to museums, he added.
‘It connects us back to our history’
While the foundation was able to find a mill in Alabama to melt the steel and incorporate stainless steel alloys to create the bars, a small rolling mill was needed to roll those bars down to plates that are one-sixth of an inch (almost 1.6 mm) thick. The foundation went in search of a place to roll their steel and found the research center CanmetMATERIALS.
“It’s ordinary steel that would rust, so it was burned into stainless steel by adding chromium and nickel in the steel plant in the southern United States,” Dauphin said.
“But they could not find a place to roll the steel down. It must first be hot-rolled, quenched and then cold-rolled to a thickness of one-sixth of an inch, and they could not find a rolling mill anywhere in the United States that could do this quite quickly. .
“So they turned to us … In a way, it connects us back to our story, because [the research centre was] created in 1942 to help Canada with the war effort, “Dauphin added.
Dauphin said they received four plates and one was used for one test roll – hot rolling – to ensure that all parameters were appropriate.
“When we were able to roll the steel without damaging it or cracking it, we set the parameters and then we rolled two more plates.
“On December 7, the last plate will be rolled. The USS Arizona was sunk by only a single bomb that hit its ammunition magazine at exactly 8:05, Pearl Harbor time.
“So what we have to do is keep the plate at 1,200 degrees [Celsius] and take it out at exactly 14.05 [ET] the seventh of December. “It will take 80 years to the minute from the bombing that sank the ship,” Dauphin said.
‘Like rolling pizza dough’
One of the researchers working on the project, Fateh Fazeli, said the pilot-scale rolling mill is unique in North America.
At CanmetMATERIALS, we have a unique facility and perhaps the only place in North America that could [do this] process, “Fazeli told CBC News.
“[It’s like having] pizza dough and then you have a roll, you flatten it and make it thinner and thinner. We do something similar with metal. “
Fazeli said he was one of the leading technical people to determine the specifications for the mill after the lab moved to Hamilton from Ottawa in 2012.
He said he thought the mill’s only role would be to provide services to the industrial sector.
“At the time, I could not imagine at one point that this mill could play a much more valuable or different type of role and contribution to society, for example, by honoring peacekeeping forces or preserving history,” Fazeli said.
“For me, from the beginning of this project about a month ago, when I noticed that this mill can contribute to these different aspects of Canadian society, I was very impressed and I was very keen to be a part of it and contribute more in not only science but also in preserving history and honoring some heroes and peacekeeping forces in society. “
Fazeli said he and his colleagues are “honored to be a small part of this project and we are very pleased that we were able to make a small contribution to preserving history and honoring our heroes.”
Role in Canada’s future with clean energy
Dauphin said that CanmetMATERIALS has also played a big role on the front with clean energy.
“We are unique in the sense that we are developing advanced materials to help Canada’s clean energy future with the latest conference of parties [COP26] and the commitments Canada has made to reduce our emissions by 2035 and then go to zero [emissions] in 2050, “he said.
The center’s website says it is working with car manufacturers to improve fuel efficiency, for example, as well as the energy sector.
“The challenges will be huge, and laboratories like the one I manage … allow Canada to position itself, re-evaluate technologies that will enable Canada to have emissions-free electricity, and to reduce emissions from its transportation sector and in finally come to the net-zero commitment that our Prime Minister made. ”
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