ThyssenKrupp's Guido Stebner explains the progress of construction as work continues on the Stainless Melt Shop facilities at ThyssenKrupp Stainless Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011 in Calvert, Ala. (Press-Register.G.M. Andrews)
CALVERT, Alabama — ThyssenKrupp AG hopes some of its customers will open wide for its newest product, 72-inch coils of stainless steel.
The German steelmaker’s stainless unit is now producing coils greater than 6 feet wide on its newest cold rolling mill. That width capability is shared by no other mill in North America and only a few other mills worldwide.
“There’s a lot of customer interest,” said Tom Brennan, who oversees the new cold rolling mill at ThyssenKrupp’s complex on the Mobile-Washington county line.
The company has a 64-inch-wide cold-rolling mill, where production began last year. A 54-inch mill will follow in 2012.
The extra-wide material could appeal to makers of stainless steel tanks and large vessels, for example.
Some tank trucks that carry food or acids are made from stainless steel. Wider sheets of stainless would mean fewer welds in fabricating such trailers, allowing them to be made more cheaply.
“If you reduce the amount of sheets, you can cut the costs,” Brennan said.
Other big users could include auto and appliance makers. All customers could benefit from being able to use more of the coil and generating less scrap.
The ThyssenKrupp machine is the only 74-inch sendzimir mill in the world, Brennan said. That type of cold-rolling mill uses a series of rollers to press hard material to precise measurements. The rollers on the Calvert machine press with 1,300 metric tons of force, and the machine can roll up to 800 meters of steel per minute.
Customers have to be assured that material will meet standards, though, because they may have to modify their machines or methods to use it. For example, some steel service centers, which buy large quantities of material and re-sell and distribute smaller amounts to users, don’t have slitters that can handle the 72-inch coils the new mill produces.
One coil could be passed through the rolling mill 10 or more times, taking more than an hour. Workers have to stop the machine to make close inspection of the steel to ensure flaws on rollers aren’t making marks which could mar the finish of the steel.
Brennan said customers have been concerned about whether ThyssenKrupp can maintain the same thickness of material across the whole strip, but so far, startup has gone relatively smoothly.
“We haven’t seen anything we can’t overcome,” Brennan said.
The 74-inch mill does have certain limits, though. It can’t roll material to as fine a gauge as the 64-inch mill. “We’re not going to be able to go down to thin-thin,” Brennan said.
The steel that ThyssenKrupp is rolling right now is imported from non-ThyssenKrupp sources abroad because the firm’s German and Italian works can’t cast something that wide. However, the melt shop ThyssenKrupp is building in Calvert will be able to pour the extra-wide strips when it begins operation in late 2012.
Still, even processing foreign material locally should give ThyssenKrupp an advantage, allowing it to offer much faster delivery to customers than they could get from ordering overseas.
Crews have moved past the early start-up phases, and are producing material now that ThyssenKrupp is trying to sell. The 74-inch mill is now running on the same schedule as the 64-inch mill.