April 2007 — Tokyo Steel recently commissioned the single-strand continuous caster supplied by Siemens Metals Technologies at the company’s Kyushu Works. The new caster has an annual capacity of 1.2 million tons and is part of a new production line for high-quality flat products.

Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co. Ltd.—Japan’s largest electric arc furnace steelmaker—has three production facilities in Japan. Tokyo Steel decided to install a heavy-plate mill at its Kyushu works in order to serve the growing demand for heavy plates.

Within the scope of this project, Siemens Metals Technologies received Tokyo Steel’s order for a new single-strand continuous slab caster in 2005. Siemens was responsible for the engineering and supply of the entire slab-casting plant. In addition to the mechanical equipment, this also included the hydraulic, cooling, lubrication, electrical, automation, and instrumentation systems.

The slab caster includes a number of technological packages to ensure continuous production and fulfillment of the product quality demands. Features includes LevCon for automatic mold-level control, DynaWidth for online mold-width adjustment, the MoldExpert system for automatic breakout prediction and strand-shell friction monitoring, as well as the DynaFlex mold oscillator for flexible adjustment of the oscillation parameters.

The caster bow area and the straightening zone are equipped with low-maintenance Smart-Segments that enable dynamic roller-gap adjustments. A long service life is facilitated by intermediately supported strand-guide rollers. The caster is also equipped with the Dynacs secondary-cooling system and with the VAI-Q slab-quality-control system for quality assurance. Siemens Metals Technologies supplied the automation and process control systems for the slab caster, allowing all operational parameters to be optimally harmonized with one another throughout the entire production process.

Siemens’ scope of supplies and services also included consultancy services for the erection phase, and start-up and commissioning of the plant.

This is the first European-designed plant of its type that was installed in a Japanese steelmaking plant. A 130-tonne electric arc furnace supplies the caster with liquid steel to produce medium-thick slabs with a thickness of 150 mm and a width of 1500 to 2500 mm. These slabs, which can be cast at speeds of up to 1.8 meters per minute, are subsequently processed in the heavy-plate mill.