| Base Metal | (english) (1) The metal present in the largest proportion in an alloy; (2) the metal to be brazed, cut or welded; (3) after welding the part of the metal that was not melted during the process. |
| Base Metal Contamination | (english) Dirt or other impurities in the steel strip. |
| Base Type | (english) Tin Mill term; Thickness divided by .00011. Also weight in pounds of one Base Box of Tin plate. In finished inventory base weight is specified instead of decimal thickness. |
| Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) | (english) "WHAT A pear-shaped furnace, lined with refractory bricks, that refines molten iron from the blast furnace and scrap into steel. Up to 30% of the charge into the BOF can be scrap, with hot metal accounting for the rest. WHY BOFs, which can refine a heat (batch) of steel in less than 45 minutes, replaced open-hearth furnaces in the 1950s; the latter required five to six hours to process the metal. The BOF's rapid operation, lower cost and ease of control give it a distinct advantage over previous methods. HOW Scrap is dumped into the furnace vessel, followed by the hot metal from the blast furnace. A lance is lowered from above, through which blows a high-pressure stream of oxygen to cause chemical reactions that separate impurities as fumes or slag. Once refined, the liquid steel and slag are poured into separate containers. " |
| Basic Oxygen Process | (english) (BOP) A process in which molten steel is produced in a furnace by blowing oxygen into molten iron, scrap and flux materials. The furnace is known as Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF). |
| Basic Oxygen Process 2 | (english) A steel making process wherein oxygen of the highest purity is blown onto the surface of a bath of molten iron contained in a basic lined and ladle shaped vessel. The melting cycle duration is extremely short with quality comparable to Open Hearth Steel. |
| Basic Steel | (english) Steel melted in a furnace with a basic bottom and lining and under a slag containing an excess of a basic substance such as magnesia or lime. |
| Basket Screen | (english) A first stage in-line water filter for water delivered from the New Blowing Room Pump Room to the Blast Furnace. The strainer contains an electric-driven rotary sieve that catches particulates and prevents them from entering the water system. |
| Bastard | (english) Threads,parts,tools and sizes that are not standard, such as, “Bastard Nuts”, “Bastard Plus”, “bastaard fittings and so forth. The term also refers to a standard coarse cut file. |
| Batch Anneal | (english) The process by which a large, stationary stack of steel coils (4 coils high) is subjected to a long heat-treating cycle. This process enables the cold-rolled sheet to fully recrystallize into the softest possible product conforming to customer specifications. Controlling the recrystallization process makes a fine-grained microstructure easy to obtain, and minimizes the tendencies for retention of directional properties of the rolled steel which could produce undesirable shapes in the stamping of a cylindrical part such as a can. Also see Anneal and Continuous Anneal. |