The Company can perform on-site Chemical Analysis of carbon, alloy and high strength materials with the recent upgrade to the ARL 3560 Optical Emission Spectrometer. For many years, this function was performed by outside laboratories. Mid-West's Laboratory now reports the percentage content of fourteen critical and trace elements to an IBM Computer for comparison to published public standards. Control tests against traditional wet chemistry analysis have confirmed the accuracy and reliability of this instrument.

In actual operation, the Spectrometer is calibrated against samples of known analysis obtained from the U.S. Government Bureau of Standards. A sample of steel is subjected to an electric arc in a pure Argon atmosphere. The resultant light is refracted through a special grid and the intensity of various wavelengths is converted to electrical signals for processing by the computer. In most cases, a sample is "burned" from four to five times and the average of the readings is reported.

This extra test on all mill-produced materials verifies the product received is consistent with the appropriate ASTM standard.