Ternium’s Mexican plants in San Nicolas De Los Garza and Puebla have awarded MORE Srl with an order for an AUTOSAND sand filling tap hole and two MOTANK slag door cleaning systems; the equipment is part of the company's "Zero Men Around" package, which is described as 'the new approach towards removing human operators around the electric arc furnace'.
The suite extends the control of the automated melting process to the operation of all processes from the charging phase to tapping.
According to MORE, the AUTOSAND system was developed to increase operator safety, avoiding manual operation from the top of the sump panel of the EBT tap hole, after tapping. A high-resolution camera has been installed on the equipment to inspect the EBT tap hole directly from the control desk in order to manage the sand charging operation remotely.
The MOTANK machine consists of a remote-controlled truck equipped with a horizontal arm, which, claims MORE, eliminates the need for a conventional forklift. It removes the scrap deposited in the slag door tunnel during bucket charging and pushes it into the furnace, away from the slag door, thus preventing scrap from dropping into the slag pit. The machine also restores the furnace breast after tapping and regenerates its working level by removing excess slag deposits.