Steel Mill Roll Shop( picture intense)

[LynnB]

so when they say roll shop it literally means the rollers for the larger mills? i always thought the naming was more complicated than that ,but i guess if you know WHAT the shops really did the names kinda explain themselves.do they let you take pics of anywhere else,or are you contained to areas that they allow you to take pics?--josh

Well in a way when they say roll shop they mean the service area for the rolls that are used to roll the steel slabs to the correct guage and width. The way it works is like this,and I'll do my best here
1. the order is put into the steel mill by the customer usually either plate or strip , we'll talk plate first
2. the slabs are made up and sent to the cold slab yard
3. slabs are put into the 166" wide preheat furnace from the cold slab yard end
4. slabs go through the furnace and are pushed out onto the roller line when temperature is correct
5. slab goes down the roller line and first goes through whats referred by us in the roll shop as the 2-HI which consist of 2 big rougher rolls , these rolls simply rough the plate down to approximate guage and then slab moves down roller line
6. slab now goes through the 4-HI stand , 4-HI consist of 2 very large rolls called PMBU (plate mill backup) the pmbu are on the top and bottom of the 2 inner rolls called PMWR ( plate mill work roll ) , the pmwrs are the ones that actually touch the hot slabs, the pmbu's job is to push from the bottom and the top pmbu roll onto the pmwr squishing the plate to proper guage, they use pmwr because they leave the squished slab\now plate with a well finished surface.
7. the finished plate is now sent down the roller line through a leveler and then pushed onto a cooling bed and then sent to be stamped and onward to heat treat and or flame cut to be cut into more precise customer requests.

OK that was plate and now strip , strip uses exact same process from 1. - 6 only now the plate being short to start is stretch out by being pushed through the 6-stand , the 6 stand consist of same as a 4-hi stand times 6 so you now have a SMBU ( strip mill back up ) rather than a PMBU pushing on SMWR ( strip mill work roll) to squish the plate only now you have 6 stands each stands has 6 different sizes of smwr's #1 stand being the rougher work horse and #6 stand being the finishing roll. So after the long plate has been stretch out to the proper guage it is now coiled hot at the end of the roller line and sent to cool.
Keep in mind that every roll has a rather its a smbu, pmbu, pmwr ,smwr or rougher all are in sets one on top and one on bottom so here's where the roll shops job comes in we get the sets coming in ( always comes in as a set ) , we strip them which is basicly taking the ends off the rolls and place them in the grinder to be ground down to a nice finish, take them back out of the grinder and put the ends back on and send the "set' back out to the Mill.
And no pictures are not permitted