Hot Strip Major Finishing Mill Control Replacement

In addition to the finishing mill model, IPACT was chosen for the replacement of all existing major finishing mill controls in the three stand hot strip mill.  The old control had to be removed and the new hardware installed, wired, and ready to roll during a planned 6 day outage.  This major control items included

• Hydraulic force application cylinder position and force control.

• Positive and negative roll bending and roll balance.

• Interstand tension control.

• Automatic Gauge Control (AGC).

• Adaptive thread – downstream setups are adjusted based on upstream results during thread.

• Thread and tailout sequencing.

• Reflective memory to communicate with the mill PLC and the level 2 computer system

IPACT supplied software, hardware and all drawings for this project, which was based around the international open VMEbus standard.

The new control system was installed and commissioned on time.  A fine tuning and adjustment period followed the outage and the mill was operating at established production levels within three weeks of the shutdown.

Integrated Process Automation & Control Technologies