A special bar quality rolling mill for the production of surface-quenched and tempered rebars, straight bars, wire rod and bar in coils, has been ordered by Karabük Demir Celik (Kardemir) of Turkey. The supplier is the German company SMS Meer.

With commissioning scheduled for Q1 2015, the mill's phase one capacity will be 700kt per annum and will double in capacity to 1.4Mt per year on completion of phase two.

The mill comprises a walking-beam reheating furnace with a capacity of 150 tons per hour, 18 modern housingless two-high stands in H/V arrangement, a Precision Sizing Mill (PSM), shears, cooling lines, cooling bed with finishing facilities, a wire rod line with ten-stand MEERdrive® wire rod block, laying head, LCC®, coil handling equipment and two coil compactors, not forgetting a coiling line with two coilers and cooling facilities.

According to SMS Meer, the heart of the mill is an advanced 3-roll Precision Sizing Mill (PSM) with hydraulic roll adjustment under load. All finished sizes for bar in coils (20mm to 55mm in diameter) and SBQ bars (20mm to 100mm in diameter) can thus be cost-effectively produced even in small batches, the company claims. The mill is designed for a maximum speed of 120m/second for wire rod and 16.5 m/second or bars.

"All finished products from the PSM are coiled on the newly developed coiling plant, which is specially designed for scratch-free handling of finished products," SMS Meer explained, adding that, "The coiler also ensures an optimum shape, height and density of the coils," the company claimed.
The facility's wire rod finishing block employs SMS Meer's MEERdrive technology whereby each wire rod stand is driven individually by its own motor. This leads to lower operating costs, less roll stockkeeping and redressing, a flexible pass design and lower energy consumption, says SMS Meer.

The mill enables thermo-mechanical rolling and incorporates a CCT® system (Controlled Cooling Technology) also developed by SMS Meer. CCT 'allows demanded mechanical properties such as tensile strength and toughness, and the microstructure of the finished product to be selectively achieved', according to SMS.

Extending the plant with a second furnace, a second roughing and intermediate mill and a second MEERdrive block has already been considered in terms of future development.