Plate Steckel Mills: Cost-Effective Solution for Heavy Plate and Strip

A Plate Steckel mill bridges the gap between Steckel mills and plate mills, producing high volumes of discrete plate relative to a standard plate mill, with the flexibility to manufacture coil plate or strip.

The Plate Steckel Mill offers a cost-effective solution for producing wide plates in coil form, up to 25 mm thick, or discrete plates up to 50 mm thick. Additionally, the plate can be straight rolled from large slab sizes, typically up to 67 tons, for high production levels. Alternatively, it can be cross-rolled from conventional slabs for moderate production levels. Plate Steckel Mills are typically single-stand operations due to the nature of the process. However, a roughing mill stand can be utilized to enhance production levels.

Plate Steckel Mills from Primetals Technologies Consists of

Rolling Mill

• Primary descaler
• Ingoing vertical edger
• Wide Steckel mill stand with entry and exit coiler furnace
• Wide heavy duty rotary crop Shear
• Coil and plate cooling system
• Hot leveller
• Fully hydraulic power downcoiler
• Coil handling system

For Discreet Plate

• Cooling beds (mechanical or fully hydraulic)
• Rolling cut double-sided trimming shear(s)
• Rolling cut cropping and dividing shear(s)
• Cold leveller, specifically designed for operational flexibility in terms of gauge and strength combinations

Plate Steckel Mill Descaling System

The Plate Steckel mill rolling process requires both scale removal and the prevention of scale reformation. Primetals Technologies supply descaling solutions to deliver industry-leading surface quality whilst utilizing a sustainable and maintenance-friendly solution. Optimized header designand automatic height adjustment deliver the target impact pressure whilst reducing both energy and water consumption. Variable-speed pump drives drastically reduce energy consumption while improving equipment longevity. An oxide suppression system provides scale control.

Plate Steckel Mill Coiler Furnaces

The core of the Plate Steckel Mill is the wide coiler furnace, explicitly designed by Primetals Technologies for each application. A two-stage guide directs the strip onto the coiler furnace drum slot and closes the furnace bottom, improving heating efficiency and temperature uniformity while reducing energy consumption. Energy use is further minimized by a recuperation system that recovers heat from waste gases while pulse-fired burners operate only on demand, promoting better temperature uniformity. The furnace atmosphere is managed by a forced air system, with waste gases discharged through the heat recovery system. Each furnace features a passive deflector roll to minimize tension variation in the strip, resulting in enhanced rolling stability.

Vertical Edger

Primetals Technologies offers a range of fully hydraulic edger designs to meet the requirements of slab thickness and the method of rolling. The process automation is configured to optimize yield for straight-rolled or cross-rolled slabs.

Plate Steckel Mill Stand

The Plate Steckel mill stand is configured to roll both plate and strip. This means it must be robust enough to roll from slabs while also being able to operate at the thinner gauges more often found in coiled strip. The process automation system ensures the optimum performance of the Plate Steckel mill process, facilitating optimal mill pacing at the exit of the Plate Steckel mill stand.

Rotary Crop Shear

This dual-purpose machine is located directly after the mill stand. In addition to its standard cropping function, it is also utilized to divide the as-rolled mother plate into daughter plates, a unique feature of the Plate Steckel Mill process.

Plate & Strip Cooling System

The system is supplied either as a Laminar cooling system or a hybrid of laminar cooling or MULPIC® for the most demanding metallurgical applications.

Power Downcoiler

The downcoiler utilizes four wrapper rolls to form the coil, ensuring tight wraps and high-quality coils across the entire hot-rolled product range, including the highest-strength pipeline steels. For high-strength wide products, Primetals Technologies can supply a heavy-duty mandrel designed for a larger-than-standard coil bore diameter.

Coil Handling System

Primetals offers standard coil handling solutions as well as systems tailored to unique requirements in terms of orientation, capacity, sampling, banding, marking, and storage locations. These systems include sampling equipment suitable for a range of gauges, featuring coil spring prevention for specific coil sizes. Coil transportation is typically managed by walking beam conveyors, with onward transport via the Primetals Technologies Modular Car System (MCS) if required by plant logistics.

Hot Leveller

Typically, a fully hydraulic nine-roll hot leveller is utilized to level discrete plates.

Crop, Double Side Trim & Divide Shears

These rolling cut plate shears feature minimal blade overlap, ensuring optimal plate edge quality and geometry. The crop shear, used in conjunction with the plate shape system, optimizes yield. The high-throughput double-side trim shear (DSTS) can make up to 30 cuts per minute, and the Divide Shear equipment includes a test piece system.