MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY
by surface-to-surface contact. Damage critical wire rod, particularly destined for Tata Steel’s growing export market, is wrapped in poly-weave or stretch film prior to shipment using technically advanced machinery, designed specifically for the Scunthorpe facility. The objective throughout the storage and logistics operation is to ensure the customer receives the product exactly as it left the mill – an objective Tata Steel is now proud to be fulfilling consistently and at an exceptionally high level. A couple of years later the rod mill also
benefited from major investment in a six strand small bloom caster at the end of the steelmaking process at Scunthorpe. Continuous Caster No 5 represents highly advanced technology to provide faster and more efficient supply into the rod mill. It features electromagnetic stirring in the mould, air mist secondary cooling of the blooms, and direct soft reduction – the latter an important technique in obviating segregation and ensuring the homogeneity of the steel critical to the consistent quality of the final wire rod. The castor also has efficient shrouding systems to ensure high levels of cleanliness during continuous casting. The blooms are hard stamped and bar
coded for identification, an integral part of an enhanced tracking and quality prediction system. As a result of this investment all feedstock for the wire rod mill is now direct cast, either as 180mm square billet or 283mm x 230mm bloom cast. The feedstock is transferred to a
state-of-the-art 200 tonne per hour capacity furnace, which directly feeds
the rod mill. This single reheat operation improves efficiency and crucially minimises decarburisation, ensuring Tata Steel consistently meets the EN 10263 limit of 1.5% average maximum partial decarburisation – and has the capability to achieve tighter limits if required. A series of seven breakdown stands,
also introduced as part of the investment programme, processes the feedstock from its rectangular or square profile to the 123mm round input required for the established rod process. This simplified the supply chain, reducing process- planning constraints, and improving traceability. As well as providing a faster and efficient supply route into the rod mill, the new system also provided the largest feedstock size of any rod mill in Europe, which means that the final coils of wire can be increased to up to 2.2 tonnes. A new tunnel furnace was also installed in the Rod Mill to ensure consistency throughout the length of the product. Surface integrity is maintained through
to the finished wire rod by rolling under controlled conditions, ensuring that the quality of the rod meets the requirements of the end application. Dimension control is ensured by continuous Orbis Gauge monitoring, which enables close control of rod tolerance and ovality. In 2012 further investment at two UK sites included enhancements to the Scunthorpe rod mill’s quality systems in the form of an upgrade to its eddy current system, which uses high-frequency voltage to detect surface quality issues as the rod is rolled. Tata Steel’s comprehensive testing
procedure is carried out in fully equipped on-site laboratories, which examine segregation, steel cleanness, scale, surface quality, decarburisation, chemical composition, size, shape and tensile strength properties of the rod. As the wire reaches the air fed cooling lines it has been reduced in diameter to between 5.5mm and 15mm. Once cooled the coils are transferred to the automatic warehouse and onwards to customers worldwide. Just another coil of cold heading wire?
If you need further convincing that raw material quality is a critical factor in the production of high grade fasteners, we have invited Tata Steel to explore those quality considerations in more detail next issue.
www.tatasteeleurope.com 78 Fastener + Fixing Magazine • Issue 81 May 2013
The automatic warehouse can hold 4,650 coils
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