Castrip, LLC

Ishikawajima-harima Heavy Industries Co., Ltd.

Bhp Steel (jla) Pty. Ltd.

John Albert Ziegelaar

Heiji Kato

Michael Angel Lopez

Hiroaki Kuwano

Brett Gray

Andrew Edward Dixon

Michael Tibbs

Thin steel strip is passed through a pinch roll stand comprising pinch rolls to a rolling mill comprising a pair of work rolls and upper and lower backing rolls. Strip passes through the bite between the work rolls and strip squeezing forces are applied between the work rolls to reduce the thickness of the strip. The pinch rolls apply tension to the strip passing to the work rolls. In order to minimize generation of crimping defects in the strip, the tension applied by the pinch rolls is high enough to ensure no part of the strip entering the work rolls is in longitudinal compression such as to exceed the buckling stress of the strip. The applied tension is sufficiently low as to produce no more than 1% strip elongation through creep. The strip may be hot rolled by the work rolls at a temperature in the range of 700&#xb0; C.&#x2013;1200&#xb0; C.

Hot rolling thin strip

Strip material is fed to a reduction rolling mill by a steering device in the form of a pinch roll stand comprising pinch rolls to which strip gripping forces are applied by hydraulic cylinder units located at the ends of the pinch rolls. A reduction mill is similarly provided with a pair of hydraulic cylinder units which are independently operable to vary the pressure applied by the reduction rolls across the strip. Sensors sense the position of the strip at a first location in advance of the pinch rolls and a second location in advance of the rolling mill. This output of sensors is fed to a controller which controls operation of both sets of hydraulic cylinder units to steer the strip.

Method and apparatus for steering strip material

A thin steel strip is passed through a pinch roll stand comprising pinch rolls to a hot rolling mill comprising work rolls and backing rolls. In advance of rolling mill, the strip passes over support rolls. An anti-crimping guide roll located immediately in advance of the rolling mill is mounted on a pair of rocker structures so as to be rasiable from a lower inoperative position to lift the strip out of a straight line path so as to pass around the anti-crimping roll and to be wrapped about the upper work roll, that roll supports the strip and resists buckling of the strip and the generation of crimping defects.

Twin roll caster produces cast steel strip that passes in a transit path through pinch roll stand and optional hot rolling mill and runout table to a coiling station which has a pair of switchable coilers. A strip shear located in advance of the coiling station is operable to sever strip into discrete lengths which can be diverted by setting deflectors to allow the severed lengths to pass across a runout table to a scrap bin. The strip may be thus severed and diverted to scrap on development of strip defects or malfunctioning of equipment without stopping continuous casting and the strip redirected to the coiling station when the problem is rectified.

Casting strip

Method and apparatus for steering a strip along a desired path. The strip 12 is fed along a guide table 13 by a pair of pinch rolls 50 which are of concave formation so as to grip the strip at two laterally spaced locations at the edges of the strip. A pair of fluid cylinder units 52 are independently operable to vary the pressures applied by the rolls at the two gripping locations to steer the strips. The position of the strip is monitored in the vicinity of the rolls 50 by a strip position sensor 51. Steering of the strip is controlled by a control signal derived from the output of sensor 51. The control signal in the sum of three factors the first of which is a measure of an instantaneous value of the lateral position of the strip, the second of which is a measure of an instantaneous lateral traversing velocity of the strip and the third of which is an integration of instantaneous values of the lateral position of the strip over a preceding time interval.

Growing community of inventors

Farmborough Heights, Australia

John Albert Ziegelaar