EUROPEAN STEEL TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATION DAYS 2017 - ESTAD 2017

The need for more effective and flexible roll-gap lubrication technologies in hot- and cold-rolling mills is steadily increasing due to ever-greater requirements placed on the rolling process and the final products. This paper focuses on two innovative technologies for highly efficient roll-gap lubrication for hot and cold rolling. For cold rolling mills, MQL® (a new generation of roll gap lubrication technologies) was successfully installed and commissioned at ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe’s tandem cold mill No.1 in Bruckhausen. MQL® replaces the conventional roll gap lubrication system with emulsion in mill stands 1 and 2 by applying minimum amounts of pure rolling oil finely atomized with pressurized air directly onto the work roll surface. As a consequence of the improved lubrication efficiency, rolling forces, motor torques and energy consumptions could be reduced and the strip surface cleanliness was significantly improved due to reduced strip wear in the first stands of the mill. For hot rolling mills, a solution concept for removing residual oil from the work roll surface is presented. In a typical hot rolling mill, the work roll lubrication (WRL) in a specific finishing mill stand is switched on a sufficient time after thread-in of the strip head and is switched off early enough before thread-out of the strip tail in order to prevent too low friction and violation of the bite condition. Due to an efficient cleaning procedure, the presented concept ensures safe thread-in independent of the lubrication conditions of the previously rolled strip.