Trends in Rolling Mill Facilities

摘要

Trends such as resource saving, energy saving and cleanliness for the environment are seen as steel making evolves toward the 21st century. For higher productivity, rolling mill facilities are being required to achieve higher performance with unmanned operation and non-stop operation and with little maintenance. As for quality, two trends are prominent: higher quality with low cost and appropriate quality with new steel making processes. To meet such requirements, Hitachi, Ltd. is developing higher performance rolling mill facilities that incoporate mechanical, electrical and computer systems. Compact-layout rolling mill facilities with small work rolls for hot rolling and cold rolling are achieving energy savings and producing higher quality products. Fully continuous rolling technology in hot strip mills is under development, although the technology has already been applied to cold rolling. Regarding electrical systems, a clean electricity supply, energy savings, large capacity inverter drive systems for compact lay out and higher performance non-stop rolling with integrated electric, instrumentation and computer (EIC) systems are under development.