Document 0goN6RQmq8zG9dQM3Mzoyge3n

s INTER-COMPANY AND INTER-DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE to: F. A. Habeeb FROM: Corporate Quality Control oate: October 19, 1973 SUBJECT; ASBESTOS-FREE BOARDS AND RINGSTOR GREAT LAKES STEEL Confirming our conversation this morning, Dan Gregan has informed us that Mr. Bill Olson, the general superintendent at Great Lakes, has given him vhat appears to be an ultimatum that we must supply asbestos-free boards and rings or risk losing the account to Ferro which already has asbestosfree supplies and is now offering silica-free .also. There is no technical problem and no insurmountable production problem supplying asbestos-free boards in EF 5465, the recipe currently in use for Middletown, Ashland, U.S.S. Fairless, etc. Fv In the case of the rings, however, the hard PROFAX #144 and #228 rings onw. the one hand and the soft Seal-On rings for the #494 and #488 systems on the other hand, I am not confident that we can make these-satisfactorily _ withou considerable scrap losses. Even with the normal FROFAX 31 type recipe we get high scrap with the former rings. The non-asbestos recipes are much more difficult to work with in the case of the latter Seal-On ring for which we do not yet have a proven non-asbestos recipe. (Some #376 Seal-On rings are to be tested next week at U.S.S. Lorain.) All the Great Lakes rings mentioned must be made on the Mark IV .machine. I understand you propose to place orders specifying asbestos-free material and that you will only request in the first instance test quantities of two pallets per item. This will give us the opportunity to test in .the mill before going into full scale production. One further point that should be mentioned is that board tools may require a slight size revision with the non-asbestos recipe. This will be determined during the trial runs. Since this demand by Great Lakes and our proposed actions exceed the "nominal experimentation with non-asbestos recipes" according to the limitations of Dr. Phoenix's recent directive, the further purpose of this memo is to obtain approval as indicated below. Please obtain these signatures and send ,me a copy so that we can get started on the program. Approved: R. C. Phoenix. W. J. Vandemark F. A. Partington WCF:mlr j cc: RCF WJV HDS PAT MSW AS JCM GHF 11DW/DG VJB/KT FOSECO 2389