Alcan International Limited

Friedrich Muller

Ghyslain Dube

Marc Auger

Yves Caron

A method of controlling a temperature of a surface of a direct chill cast ingot cast in an open-ended mold provided with a bottom block during early stages of casting as the ingot emerges from the open-ended mold. The method involves the steps of directing a flow of a coolant onto at least one surface of an ingot emerging from an open-ended mold to impinge on the surface at a normal impingement point and to cool the surface, measuring a surface temperature on the emerging ingot at at least one measurement location which is at a predetermined position close enough to the normal impingement point to be affected by the secondary coolant, to generate a measured surface temperature, determining the displacement of the bottom block of the casting machine from its initial position at the start of the cast, corresponding to each the surface temperature measurement, and using the measured surface temperature to control a casting variable and thereby to control the temperature of the surface. The invention also relates to apparatus for carrying out the above method and to a method of measuring the surface temperature.

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Schifferstadt, Germany

Friedrich Muller