Wheeling-Pittsburgh Corp. announced that its ladle metallurgy furnace, a furnace that is part of its Consteel(r) electric arc furnace (EAF) system, completed its first heat on Friday, October 1, 14 months after the project was authorized. The furnace reheats molten steel to the precise temperature necessary for it to be processed into slabs at the company's twin stream caster. It is also used to reduce sulfur content of the molten steel and add alloys to achieve the exact chemical composition for each customer's needs. The furnace used molten steel produced at the company's basic oxygen furnace in its first heat, since the EAF is not scheduled to begin production until later in the fourth quarter.