Perfectly levelled ultrathin steel strips
The 100th UMS flatness control system, that has been installed by Redex worldwide, is used at the Arinox factory to produce thin and ultrathin precision rolled strip of the highest quality.
www.redex-group.com
Arinox, one of the companies of the Arvedi Group, is a benchmark in the steel industry. It is currently the only Italian producer - and one of the largest at an international level - of precision rolled stainless steel. The Sestri Levante plant, in the province of Genoa, produces thin and extra-thin precision rolled strip in widths up to 1570 mm and gauges down to 0.050 mm.
With an annual capacity of over 65,000 tonnes and state-of-the-art industrial facilities, the Sestri Levante industrial centre produces precision-rolled stainless steel, nickel alloy and titanium strip for the automotive, precision mechanical, plant engineering, components, biomedical and electronics sectors.
The stainless steel precision strip sector is a particularly important one due to the high-tech content of the product, which requires the availability of cutting-edge machinery, combined with extraordinary technical expertise in production processes. Arinox has always actively collaborated with its strategic suppliers, such as Redex for the flattening process, to develop those innovative solutions that allow it to differentiate itself on the market by offering products of the highest quality and precision.
Perfect flatness is a quality guarantee
To offer quality rolled products, it is essential that the material is as flat as possible. The flatter a strip is, the better it is slit, avoiding deformations in the subsequent slitting process. The rolling process flattening operation downstream and any annealing makes the strip more suitable for precision slitting, by improving its mechanical characteristics. At the Sestri Levante plant, Arinox has always successfully used Redex solutions to carry out tension leveling operations.
As Mr. Mauro Moretti, Technical Director of Arinox, tells us: “Ever since our first narrow-table rolling line, we have adopted the tension leveling technology of Ungerer, a company that later merged with Redex. Given the excellent results, when subsequently investing in rolling mills of 1260 mm width and, more recently, of 1575 mm width, we again chose Redex's flattening solutions, a company with which we continue to collaborate very successfully and whose expertise and availability we appreciate.”
The main purpose of the tension-leveling process for rolled metal strip is to correct the shape of the material by bending it through small, calibrated deformations under the effect of an externally applied pull. The outcome is a controlled elongation, which makes the short fibres of the strip long and equal to the longer ones, thus achieving a flat strip and relieving internal stresses.
The 100th UMS flatness control system
The flatness measurement and control system plays a very important role in order for the tension leveling system to guarantee the required level of precision.
The UMS (Unflatness Measurement System) from Redex, which has now evolved into the even more sophisticated UMP PRO (Proactive) version, is a world-renowned solution for its accuracy and effectiveness. It has enjoyed considerable success worldwide, and the 100th system of this kind has been installed precisely at Arinox, actively contributing to maintaining flatness within the very strict tolerance limits required by the Ligurian company's customers.
As Mr. Moretti explains: “by means of an intelligent roller sensorised with piezoelectric cells, the UMS PRO system corrects the position of the wedges in the leveling box and the pulling force in real time, without any need for the operator’s manual intervention, thus guaranteeing great uniformity of product quality.”
But research and experimentation of innovative solutions is ongoing at Arinox, in keeping with the tradition of the parent company Arvedi Group. For example, a new type of bridle roller has recently been tested in collaboration with Redex, which has proved to be particularly suitable for further improving the flattening process, particularly in the machining of raw materials, i.e. rolled stainless steel without annealing, often used in the automotive sector or for manufacturing springs.
Mr. Moretti concludes: “Machines are never perfect, it is men who must know how to drive them and make them better. In Redex, we have found a partner with whom we can pursue our path of continuous improvement.”
www.redex-group.com
