Abstract:
By rolling a slab with a thickness of 80 mm or less in a plant including a continuous casting machine and a hot strip rolling mill directly combined with each other, low-speed rolling can be achieved while suppressing a drop of the strip temperature and the occurrence of scales. After a slab 2 cast by a continuous casting machine 1 and being 80 mm or less thick is heated and descaled, it is rough-rolled into a bar with a thickness of 20 to 60 mm by a roughing mill 7 constructed as a 4H-twin mill. After being heated and descaled again, the bar is finish-rolled by finishing mills 19 to 21, each of which employs small-diameter work rolls having a diameter not larger than 500 mm, into a thin plate with a thickness in the range of 1.6 mm to 15 mm or a thick plate with a thickness in the range of 3 mm to 40 mm. The rolling speed on the delivery side of the finishing mills 19 to 21 is set to be as low as 350 m/minute or less with a result of small production scale, and the plant length is set to be not longer than 100 m with a result of small plant space.
Abstract:
Guide roller units are made movable back and forth in the direction of thickness of a slab, allowing slab lagging covers to be inserted to and withdrawn from gaps formed between the guide roller units and the slab. Depending on the casting speed, those ones of the guide roller units and the slab lagging covers which are in proper positions are replaced from one to the other for selective use so that the respective lengths of a cooling zone and a heat keeping zone are adjusted to control the cooling rate of the slab in a positive manner. The slab temperature can be kept at a value capable of carrying out rolling regardless of change in the casting speed depending on variations in the amount of molten steel supplied.