Industrial structural steel fabrication is responsible for several kinds of structural steel in use today. Each kind of industrial steel has been put through one or more processes to give it unique properties that are desirable under a given set of circumstances. The following sample of processes are just some of the things applied to industrial structural steel during manufacturing and how each of the processes changes the metal. 

Addition and Subtraction of Contents

Making steel has always been an art form. Through the centuries, people discovered how to add and subtract various elements and metals to their steel to make it stronger and less brittle. Where structural steel is concerned, avoiding brittleness is of the utmost necessity. You do not want to build with steel beams only to have the beams crack and falter! To get that kind of strength needed to support multiple levels of building structure, more carbon, titanium, and/or other metals and elements are added, while iron is subtracted. Forging these things together into a liquid steel that will result in a much stronger building component is the objective. 

Forging and Tempering

Once a factory has a molten steel with the right atomic makeup, then forging the steel with heat to increase its strength and tempering it after it has been molded and cooled will make the steel even stronger. The steel may go through several temperings after it has been made into I-beams and other structural steel items. Massive steel forges and cooling stations for tempering are set up to give structural steel exactly the right hardness. 

Welding

It seems odd that welding would be used to make structural steel even more sound, but the objective is not to weld things together. It is to give areas of steel products that might be weakened during construction some reinforcement by making just those areas a little bit stronger than the surrounding steel. The areas targeted with welding will be the areas that end up supporting more and more weight until the building is complete. Welding is essentially "spot-tempering" and taking the steel one step further to make sure it can distribute the force of the weight upon it as it is used in construction. These particular products are most commonly used as corners in buildings, and as load-bearing supports or beams around doorways and windows so that the building cannot force its way downward on the openings. 

Share