Hot Rolling is the process of shaping steel, aluminum and other metal by reducing the transverse section by exerting pressure on one or various rolling stands. Hot rolling takes advantage of the metal’s ductility at high temperatures to execute great section reductions.
Flat product hot rolling mills are fed from flat slabs, previously heated and homogenized in reheating furnaces in order to achieve suitable temperatures for the subsequent transformation process.
There are several combinations of rolling mills for flat product, depending on the type of product that we want to obtain.
- For the production of sheet metal plates, a non-reversible duo stand, commonly known as Edger, is usually used to perform a previous descaling. Then, later, a 4 High reversible stand converts the slab into a 20 or 30 meters plate sheet that after being cut in head and tail is cooled in a cooling bed prior to storage and shipping.
- When the objective is to obtain hot-rolled coils (HRC), the slab passes to a continuous or semi-continuous rolling mill, previously subjected to a descaling process by pressurized water. The continuous rolling mill is usually comprised of between 5 to 7 stands, with final thicknesses being comprised between 12 and 1 mm (and even less).