13.2.4.

Strip Rolling Mills

The standard conventional rolling mill (Fig.
13.2.4.1. A Single Mill Stand.
13.45) comprises the following components:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

The rolls.
The frame.
The gap-control mechanism.
The power system and power transmission.
Instrumentation and operation control.

FIGURE 13.45. Schematic of a mill stand.

The position of the crowned cylindrical rolls and the measure of the roll gap
(Section 13.2.3.3b) are controlled through the bearings on each end of each roll,
these being confined by the mill frame and a screwdown mechanism or hydraulic
cylinders. The strip enters the gap between the rolls with a thickness gauge larger
than the gap. The strip decreases in thickness while passing through the rolls from
the entrance side to the exit. The pressure on the strip to induce the reduction in

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thickness by plastic deformation is created by the roll separation force. The force
created between the rolls is supported through the bearings on the end of the rolls
by the frame of the mill. The rolls bend and flatten and the frame stretches under
these loads. Large mills may have 1-meter-diameter rolls with forces reaching
5000 tons on the bearings.
The extent of the elastic deformation of the mill under load can be envisioned
from the following. When thin strip is to be rolled and the gap between the rolls is
to be set on the idling mill, running empty without a strip, the rolls are pressed
against each other, creating a negative gap. As the strip is introduced, the mills
elastic give permits a positive gap between the rolls corresponding to the desired
strip thickness at the exit.
The gap between the rolls is controlled by an electric-driven screwdown
mechanism in the more conventional presses, replaced today, more and more, by
a piston and hydraulic cylinder. The rolls are driven by DC motors with capacities
of up to 5000 HP each. The motor-generators for the rectifiers to supply the
power are power stations in themselves. The smaller mills today are served by
solid-state rectifiers.
The reduction of an ingot to a plate is usually performed by hot rolling through
a single pair of rolls passing the mill, back and forth, numerous times. The
rotational direction of the rolls is reserved for each pass, while the gap is adjusted
to take further reduction. Occasionally, after every few passes, the ingot is turned
on its side, with the proper gap adjustment, so that the width is reduced. The
manipulation of the billet and the mill are performed by a highly trained team, and
it takes years of team experience to coordinate the operation. The control station
is an essential part of the rolling mill.
Of late, industry has been successful in assisting some manual control by
automation. A fully automated reversible mill has not yet been developed, but it
appears to be a reasonable expectation.
Reversible blooming mills are used to break the ingot into a plate for possible
further rolling into strip, or to produce bar of a variety of profiles. Schematics of
the two-high and four-high roll arrangements are presented in Fig. 13.37. Threehigh mills are described in Section 13.3.3, and planetary mills in Section 13.2.4.4.
A six-high mill for profile control is described in Section 13.2.3.3e.
After the blooming mill has reduced the
13.2.4.2. Tandem Rolling Mills.
ingot into a plate, many more rolling passes may be required before the strip
reaches the required thinness. For efficient production the strip is rolled on a
continuous production line, passing from one mill station to another at high speed
without stopping or reeling between stations. A standard tandem mill will contain
about six individual mill stands (Fig. 13.46). The mill plant will employ dozens of
these six-stand tandem mills, and some strip may continuously pass through most
of them on a path a mile long.

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FIGURE 13.46. Schematic of a tandem mill.

Between the tandem mills a reservoir of strip may be provided through several
mechanisms. The most common mechanism is a bend and variable position roll
(see Fig. 13.46). This small-capacity storage is required for contingencies and for
temporary speed discrepancies.
At some points along the production line, larger reservoirs of strip may be
needed to assure uninterrupted running of the plant equipment. Reservoirs for
coils of 100 to 200 tons of 60-in-wide steel strip, called Sendzimir spiral loopers,
have been developed by T. Sendzimir, Inc. In this design the excess strip is
collected as a coil, turning on a table. The incoming strip collects onto the coil on
the outside while the payoff is removed from the inside, or vice versa. Two coils
may share the same axis of symmetry, one above the other. The top coil may
collect layers on the outside and pay off on the inside into the inside of the bottom
coil, which then pays off through its outside. When excess material is coming in,
the coil gets larger and reserve is built up to be released when needed. The speeds
of accumulation and release of strip are controlled independently according to
conditions.
While the initial stages of rolling of the ingot are performed at elevated
temperature, the rolling of thin strip is done at room temperature.
Speed and roll gap control between individual stations of a tandem mill are
very critical. The volume rates of strip passing through all pairs of rolls must be
.

identical. Thus, if the volume production rate is V , and the width of the strip is
assumed constant, then
.

v1t1 = v 2 t 2 = = v n t n = V /w

(a)

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The exit speed vf from each station is uniquely determined by the emerging
strip thickness from that station. The rolling circumferential velocity is slightly
lower than the exit velocity of the strip, vf . The mill gap and speed at each station
is preset before rolling starts; thereafter, both have to be continuously controlled
to accommodate normal fluctuations in temperature, thickness of the incoming
strip, etc. The monitoring and control station, usually above and in full view of
the mill, is manned by teams of operators, each assigned the limited task of
controlling the speed or gap for each station. Observing the behavior of the strip
between a pair of rolls, the operator judges the changes required to increase or
decrease the tension between stands. The action of each operator strongly affects
the occurrences on both sides of his station and (with diminishing strength) the
occurrences farther along the line. For example, an increase in speed at an
intermediate station will increase the back tension and decrease the front tension
of that station (see Ref. 6). In turn, the increased back tension is also an increase
in the front tension of the preceding station, which causes thinning of the
emerging strip from that station. That in turn affects the incoming speed to that
station, and so on. The entire team must cooperate, reacting swiftly and in
complete harmony. This harmony is attained by long periods of experience
combined with training of new members one at a time. At speeds of 2000 meters a
minute, when a slack is starting to show, precise response must be immediate.
Otherwise, tension is eliminated, the excess length of strip between the two
stations doubles up and folds, and a triple layer of strip enters the gap between the
rolls downstream. The station cannot handle the separation force, and a costly
($40,000) break of a roll at its transition from bearing to full diameter results.
The trend toward automation of the mill has picked up momentum over the past
twenty-five years. At first data logging was implemented, with identification of
the ingot, all of its processing history, and its destination. Instrumentation to
measure the roll separation force by load cells and interstation tension (see Fig.
13.46) was introduced. Today, standard commercial load-cell units can be
attached to the column of any old or new mill, to provide a continuous reading of
the roll separation force. The relation of that force to the thickness of the strip is
fully determined. The roller of the tension device is preloaded and its position
recorded to indicate the interstation tension. These readings can be very helpful to
the team controlling the mill, even if speed and gap control are manually effected.
In the more progressive mill operations more and more of the readings of roll
separation force and interstation tension are automatically linked to the mill
control by closed loops. Gradually more of the gap and speed controls are being
undertaken by the computer. At first only simple tasks on individual stations were
provided for, like gap control through reading of the roll separation force by
closed-loop analog circuitry. Overall control was still maintained manually.
Today, fully automated tandem mills controlled by digital computers are a reality.
To utilize the mill most efficiently, all stations must deliver power to their full
capacity. A program to distribute the reductions properly so that no station will be
running at less than full capacity is described in Ref. 37. When each station is

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running at full power capacity and at the optimal conditions for that station, the
mill is producing at its peak rate.
References 38-40 describe some early studies for the automation of mills.
Reference 20 describes work on automation in Japan, where the first fully
automated mills were built and operated.
13.2.4.3. Cluster Rolling Mills. The thinner the strip to be rolled, the smaller
is the required roll diameter before the limiting thickness (Section 13.2.1.4) is
reached, unless hydrodynamic lubrication (Section 13.2.2) is established. If a
four-high rolling mill is used with working rolls of very small diameter and too
large backup rolls (say more than twice the diameter of the working rolls), the
working rolls may start to deflect horizontally. To prevent the horizontal
deflection the cluster, rolling mills were introduced, using working rolls of very
small diameter with a train of supporting rolls of progressively increasing
diameter. Each roll is supported by two larger-diameter rolls. Thus the working
roll is supported by two rolls, while the two support rolls are supported in turn by
three backup rolls, as Fig. 13.47 shows. The mill of Fig. 13.47 is called a 1-2-3
cluster rolling mill. When another line of four larger rolls supports the previous
three, the mill is called a 1-2-3-4 cluster rolling mill. Today, 1-2-3-4-5 cluster
rolling mills are available. The designs by Sendzimir41 have introduced new
features into the old technique, so that todays nearest to perfectly uniform thin
strip is produced worldwide by the Sendzimir cluster rolling mills. Some of these
features are as follows:
1.

2.

The support rolls in the last line are supported by the mill housing
through their entire length. An eccentric-cam arrangement, controlled by
continuous thickness measurement through the width, can rectify
thickness variations locally across the width.
The small-diameter (12-mm) working rolls can be made of carbide, which
is twice as rigid as steel and by far more wear-resistant, and which can be
polished much smoother.

FIGURE 13.47. Cluster rolling mill.

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FIGURE 13.48. Planetary rolling mills.

3.
4.

The cast or welded housing is much more rigid than in previous designs.
Working rolls can be changed smoothly with little time and effort.

With the introduction of the Sendzimir cluster rolling mills, the rolling speed
increased impressively over that of older cluster rolling mills. Today, Sendzimir
cluster mills can reach speeds of up to 150 meters per minute. However, a fourhigh rolling mill still runs at 10-fold higher speeds. Small-diameter rolls cannot
develop very great circumferential speed. Note also the alternative of rolling with
hydrodynamic lubrication (Section 13.2.2).
13.2.4.4.

Planetary Rolling Mills

13.2.4.4a. The Concept. In a planetary rolling mill many small-diameter

working rolls are arranged around a single, much larger support roll on each side
of the strip (Fig. 13.48). The working rolls are in rolling motion both over the
workpiece and over the support rolls, thus eliminating sliding friction. The small
area of contact between each roll and the workpiece minimizes the roll separation
force. While the workpiece is moved slowly forward by the feed rolls, the
working rolls rotate rapidly, each working roll taking a small reduction. A large
total reduction in one pass of the billet is accomplished by the many passes of the
many rolls. The mills described in Sections 13.2.4.4b and 13.2.4.4c are most
suitable for development work and medium-size production plants, where
frequent changes of size and alloy are expected. It is comparatively easy to
change products on a planetary rolling mill. When the operation of the planetary
rolling mill is preceded by a continuous casting and followed by a cluster rolling

88

mill, a very compact plant can cover the full operation, on a continuous basis,
from the melt to thin-strip product.
The concept of planetary
13.2.4.4b. Sendzimir Planetary Rolling Mill.
rolling was first introduced by Sendzimir.42 In his design the backup rolls are
driven while the working rolls, flexibly held in the cage (Fig. 13.48), roll over the
workpiece and over the backup roll. Thus, each working roll, as it contacts the
workpiece, rotates around its own axis of symmetry while advancing at the same
time circumferentially around the axis of symmetry of the backup roll. The
circumferential speed of the working roll is intermediate between the speed of the
strip and that of the back-up roll. From the moment of contact with the strip at the
entrance to the moment each individual working roll leaves the strip at the exit, its
rotational speed around its own axis and its circumferential speed around the axis
of symmetry of the backup roll are constantly increasing. Thus, the distances
between the working rolls that are in contact with the strip at any time undergo
constant change. The positioning of the individual work rolls in the cage permit
changes in distance between the rolls. While each working roll takes a small
reduction on the strip, it also leaves a very shallow but visible feed mark on it.43
These feed marks are insignificant, but if desired, they can be removed by
subsequent rolling, either conventional or with a cluster rolling mill.
13.2.4.4c. Krupp Planetary Rolling Mill. The concept later introduced by
the Krupp-Platzer44,45 planetary mill eliminates the problem of feed marks on the
strip. Here the backup rolls are stationary, while the work rolls are separated from
the backup roll by a set of small-diameter intermediate rolls. The two layers of
working and intermediate rolls are housed in a driven cage. The arrangement of
the stationary backup rolls permits the provision of a flat region in the exit area of
the strip where the working rolls on the opposite sides of the strip move for a
short while in a linear motion which eliminates the feed marks.
Another alternative design is provided by replacing one set of planetary rolls
and their backup with a regular large-diameter roll in direct contact with the strip.
The planetary arrangement is then retained on only one side of the strip.
A study of the operation of the planetary rolling mill is presented in Ref. 46.

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