Billet Casting Equipment: Ladle, Tundish, Mould, and More

Billet Casting Process Equipment

Continuous casting process will turn steel liquid into billets, in CCM unit main process equipment or machines as following.

Ladle support equipment

In continuous casting, ladles are generally used to supply steel to the continuous caster. The equipment that transports the ladle to the top of the intermediate tank and supports it. At present, the ladle support equipment device has craning ladle type, ladle support type, ladle car type, ladle turret four kinds.

  1. Lifting ladle type: the crane will lift the ladle to the specified position.
  2. Ladle stand type: the ladle is supported by a stand in a prescribed position.
  3. Ladle car type: ladle car can walk and support two ladles and straddle above the tundish. This device and the continuous casting machine and ladle crane must be in the same bay of the plant in order to ensure the normally continuous furnace casting. One continuous casting machine must also be equipped with two ladle cars.
  4. Ladle turret: The ladle turret consists of a fixed part and rotating part. The fixed part is bolted to the foundation, while the rotating part and the fixed part are combined with the bearings of the rotating cup. The rotating arm can both rotate 180~and can lift. The structure of this device is relatively simple, easy to operate from a distance, and safe and reliable high efficiency.

Tundish

The role of the tundish is mainly used to hold the steel liquid from the ladle, and the steel liquid is distributed to each mold, so it can control the flow of steel injected into the mould and uniform temperature of the liquid, also for non-metallic inclusions in the steel to create the conditions for the floating. When the height of the steel level in the tundish is maintained at a certain level, it also has the effect of pressure stabilization.

Tundish car

The tundish car mainly pulls the tundish movement, has walking, lifting, fine-tuning the position of the nozzle functions. Common small capacity tundish uses electrical drive, hydraulic drive mode suits for large capacity tundish.  On the tundish rail equipped sensor to weigh the liquid.

Mould

The mould is to cool and solidify the steel liquid into a certain thickness of steel shell, in order to avoid the billet fracture when it is pulled out of the mould. The mould is generally required to use pure copper or copper alloy with good thermal conductivity, heat deformation, its internal slotting or drilling to keep high pressure cooling water at 5 ~ 10m / s flow rate through. In order to improve the wear resistance of the mould wall, the inner surface of the general also takes measures such as chromium plating. The structure of the mould can be broadly divided into three types: integral, tubular and assembled.

Mould vibration device

The mould vibration device can make the mould do reciprocating movement, mainly to avoid the liquid sticking to the mould, in order to avoid the solidification shell breaking down and to cause leakage of steel accidents, and at the same time can improve the heat transfer and the quality of the billet.

Secondary cooling device

The solidification shell of the billet coming out of the mould is very thin, about 10-30 mm thick, and the interior is still molten steel. If there are defects on the surface of the billet, there is a risk that the molten steel will flow out. Therefore, it is necessary to continue cooling in order to make the billet out of the mould as completely solidified as possible.

Straightening device

The straightening device continuously pulls the billet out of the mould with adjustable speed and also straightens the bent billet in the arc continuous casting machine and keeps it output in the horizontal direction.

Billet cutting machine

The cutting machine is to cut continuous casting billet by the fixed length size.

The flame cutter mainly works with acetylene or propane and high-pressure oxygen fuel. Advanced flame cutter should include walking device, cutting gun device, end detection and billet clamping device, etc., its common types are manual, semi-automatic and fully automatic mode.

Hydraulic billet cutting machine is complex but it has high productivity.

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