9th ECCC European Continuous Casting Conference – ECCC 2017

WinLink is a pioneering technology from Primetals Technologies that allows both endless and semi-endless production of long products from liquid steel without interruption. The solution directly links a high-speed billet caster to a high availability rolling mill by using an advanced induction heating unit instead of conventional billet reheating furnace. GPH Ispat Ltd. in Chittagong / Bangladesh is the first client where Primetals will implement the WinLink solution providing the full flexibility to run the plant in various production modes. One strand of the 3-strand Win Link billet caster is linked directly to the rolling mill in endless mode where up to 70 tph rolled products can be produced at casting speeds of about 6 m/min without cutting and heat loss. The two additional billet strands are used for the production of about 50 tph saleable billets which are transported over the cooling bed and to be rolled on GPHs existing rolling mill. This multi-strand configuration significantly improves the productivity of the plant by providing better flexibility in unpredictable market changes. The paper will provide an overview of different profitable WinLink variants which are offered for production of capacities up to 750.000 t/a of rolled products and presents the implemented technologies to enable high speed casting up to 6 m/min at the GPH billet CCM.