Essential Heavy Machinery used in a Steel Manufacturing plant

As per the report by World Steel Organisation, over 60% of production costs (time, buffer stocks, quality losses, energy, product damage, safety) are directly and indirectly influenced by the efficiency and effectiveness of the operation and the maintenance activities in a Steel Manufacturing unit.

The modernized steel manufacturing facilities are equipped with technologically advanced heavy types of machinery, which function in synergy to manufacture their individual steel products. These machinery form a sort of assembly line for the products, that are processed step-by-step to form finished steel goods. The properties and the operation of these units differ, based on the individual processes, but their overall purpose is more or less the same. They are integral to the steel plant, and only through their proper functioning, manufacturers ensure the quality of their unit’s outputs.

  Here is an overview of the types of heavy machinery used in a steel manufacturing plant:

1) General Industrial Technologies: Like any other industrial unit, a wide variety of conveyor belts, motors, heaters, boilers and reboilers, exhausts, heat recovery units, pumps, pipelines, cranes, and other basic machines are incorporated in a steel plant. These are not specific to steel industries, but a general set of tools required in any sort of manufacturing facility. They are primarily used for facilitating the handling part of the process, or its secondary operations like heating, transporting, etc. They form a supplementary system, through which the individual machinery are connected. 

2) Rolling Mill: The Rolling mill is operated in a steel plant, for hot-rolling the steel bars/billets, uniformly, without causing any defects and impurities in its composition. The rolling mill incorporates cylindrical rollers, in opposing pairs or against flat plates, to shape the steel products. The rolling mill consists of a roughing mill train, intermediate mill trains, and finishing mill train with D.C. drives, for continuous operation. At Agni Steels, This is used primarily for converting billets into high-quality TMT Steel bars by applying heat, pressure and subjected to quenching.

3) Quench Box: Quenching refers to the process of rapidly cooling a hot metal to improve its physical strength and hardness, by exposing the metal with fresh water. Freshwater is injected at regular intervals into the nozzles that are equally spaced along the cooling length of the rod. Quench box is an intricate piece of machinery that involves handling of near-melting temperatures of steel, and cooling them with water. The quality of quench box determines the quality of quenching that the rod is subjected to, which in turn affects the layers that determine its physical properties.

Many other types of machinery, like CCM (Continuous Casting Machine), Straightening machines, Loopers, Girders, etc. are exclusively used in steel industries for their individual purposes. Proper maintenance and operation ensure the best quality for the end products in any facility. They are quintessential for the production of steel goods, as they directly affect the composition, strength, endurance, uniformity, ductility, and other such properties. Due to advancing technologies, a lot of developments have tweaked the existing machinery to improve the process.

Agni Steels encourages the research and development at its manufacturing facility, to improve the quality and productivity of its machinery.