Flexibility and productivity in cold rolling of aluminum

SMS group offers single-stand cold rolling mills for a broad spectrum of aluminum alloys and thin strip and multi-stand tandem cold mills as the solution for a large production capacity. We completed our portfolio of cold rolling mills by the EDT rolling mill, especially designed for rolling and tempering of automotive grades.

EDT rolling

Customized surface properties for automotive sheets

There are extremely high demands on material for exposed car panels. Here, automotive manufacturers insist on excellent formability during pressing and a perfect surface appearance after painting. EDT rolling transfers this exact finish onto the strip during the final rolling pass.

Plant types

  • Single-stand cold rolling mill (CRM)

    Solutions from the market leader for a wide range of aluminum grades and thin strip

    Main data

    products up to an annual production capacity of up to 200,000 tons. There is nothing to beat the CRM when it comes to hard grades. This mill type rolls a material range from AA1xxx up to AA8xxx series. To suit your specific requirements, you can choose between CVC® plus 4-high or 6-high versions. 

    Layout of single-stand cold rolling mill for aluminum
  • Combined reduction and EDT rolling mill

    Flexible designs for special applications

    There is an ever-growing demand from the automotive industry for aluminum. Highly formable 5xxx-series alloys are mainly used for inner car body parts, whereas 6xxx-series alloys are favored for exposed outer parts. To ensure you meet car manufacturers' requirements, we developed our innovative combined reduction and EDT rolling mill. It's available in single or twin-stand versions.

    One great advantage is that Inner car body parts and exposed parts can be processed in the same mill. In EDT mode roughness is transferred onto the strip surface by EDT-machined work rolls during a soft reduction pass using lower rolling forces. The “combo mill” can be flexibly operated either in heavy-force reduction modes or in light-force EDT mode.

    Aluminum coil
  • Tandem cold mill

    Solutions for large volumes of high-quality strip

    Main data

    AA3xxx and AA5xxx-series aluminum grades are typically used for manufacturing beverage cans. This is where tandem cold mills (TCM) from the market leader offer you the most efficient solution. Operating several single-stand mills doesn't make economic sense, especially if you want a production volume of up to 450,000 t/year. Our tandem cold mills for aluminum are available as two stands, three stands or four stands in CVC® plus design.

    Layout tandem cold mill

SMS group email service

Our promise to you: this is not just another newsletter!

Let's get in touch!

Use our contact form for questions, inquiries or personal contact.

Technology

  • Dry strip system (DS system)

    Excellent surface quality

    Now available to you is our new-generation DS system. It offers you an ideal, contact-free way to remove rolling emulsion residues from strip. What makes this system so highly efficient is that it needs less compressed air.

    Installed in the exit of a cold rolling stand, the DS system simply blows cooling lubricant residues off the strip surface. This effectively prevents stain spots. High productivity is the hallmark of our latest-generation DS systems. That's due to the optimum combination of stationary and movable sealing elements as well as precisely balanced blow-off and extraction areas. One of the core components of the DS system is the wear-proof and contactless sealing of the roll barrel. This is also known as a COANDA nozzle.

    Coil aluminum

    Benefits

    • Sound level below 82 dBA
    • 50% lower maintenance costs
    • 62% lower energy costs
    • 80% fewer rejected coils
  • Superior design and actuators for roll gap setting

    Better yield and quality

    Outstanding CVC® plus 4-high and CVC® plus 6-high designs for better yield and quality, proven by more than 800 installed systems.

    Benefits

    • Shifting under all load conditions
    • A very large roll gap adjusting range for flexible handling of a wide variety of incoming hot strip profiles
    • Top flatness results
    • Excellent strip quality due to uniform load and roughness transfer
    • Low operational costs with less roll wear and less maintenance
  • Inline inspection

    Fast and reliable inspection of the finished strip

    We designed our inline inspection feature so you can perform fast inspection of the finished strip surface. It’s vital that you reliably detect any surface flaws that occur during the rolling process. What you gain from our automated rapid defect detection solution is guaranteed better quality. That’s because the inline inspection helps prevent damage to the valuable material. The result? You produce fewer reject coils. Plus: you can apply inline inspection either on its own or alongside a conventional offline inspection. This combination breaks down the work involved in further time-consuming inspections.

    There are two primary elements of the inline inspection equipment: a cross cut shear in the exit of the rolling stand that cuts the strip sample, and a conveyor belt that transports it to the inspection table. Next up are two fully automatic manipulators that position the sample on a table for inspection of the top strip surface. Then the manipulators pick up the sample and turn it over for checking the bottom strip surface. Later, when the inspection is finished, a conveyor transports the sample to another cross cut shear, which cuts it into smaller pieces. All this ends when scrap drops into a scrap box.

    Strip inspection
  • Inductive edge heating system

    Excellent strip quality right to the edges

    It's a huge challenge to avoid excessive tension at the strip edge during aluminum strip cold rolling. The conventional solution is the hot edge spray (HES) method of heating the work roll barrel. New on the market, our inductive edge heating system reduces strip tension. That ensures faster rolling speeds at lower energy consumption and higher efficiency.

    Essentially, the principle behind our inductive edge heating system is an alternating magnetic field that induces eddy currents to generate heat directly on the roll surface.

    Aluminum coil

    Benefits

    • Highly accurate work-roll heating in the strip edge area
    • Heating even at high work-roll temperatures
    • Lower energy consumption compared to conventional HES
    • Less equipment
    • Can be installed in new mills as well as retrofitted
  • EDT rolling

    Customized surface properties for automotive sheets

    There are extremely high demands on material for exposed car panels. Here, automotive manufacturers insist on excellent formability during pressing and a perfect surface appearance after painting. It's above all the European car industry which relies on surfaces with isotropic roughness. EDT rolling transfers this exact finish onto the strip during the final rolling pass.

    Crucial here is a specific roughness on the work rolls created by electric discharged texturing (EDT). Once it is applied to the roll barrel, this roughness transfers precisely onto the strip surface. Using EDT rolls ensures the required quality and durability of the color coatings on the exposed parts. The EDT rolling stand is highly versatile. That's because it applies high rolling forces for reduction passes, as well as low rolling forces. So you can achieve various production schedules.

    Benefits

    • Isotropic structure
    • Better formability
    • Better press-shop handling
    • Better lacquer appearance and panel matching
  • Airwash system

    Clean air and low costs

    It's important to clean the polluted exhaust air from aluminum and non-ferrous cold rolling mills. Ideal for this job is our AirwashTM exhaust air purification system. This ensures clean exhaust air and cuts your overheads by recovering the rolling oil so you can use it again.

    Inevitably, some of the rolling oil evaporates during aluminum cold rolling. The best way to manage these vapors is to channel them into our AirwashTM system. Here, they pass through separation elements where washing oil filters out the oily components. Next up, the rolling oil and washing oil are further separated in a rectification process. This is how our AirwashTM system separates drop-like and gaseous particles from the air. Then you can recycle this valuable resource. The system comprises two sections, one for exhaust-air purification, and one for washing-oil recovery. We also supply AirwashTM 300 oil specially formulated for use in AirwashTM exhaust-air purification systems.

    Airwash system

    Benefits

    • High exhaust-air purity
    • High rolling-oil recovery rate
    • Long washing-oil service life
    • Lower energy consumption due to energy recovery
    • Low maintenance costs
    • Low disposal costs
  • High-efficiency cooling unit (HEC)

    Higher rolling speeds and increased productivity

    Rolling oil is essential for aluminum cold rolling. Unfortunately, its temperature sensitivity limits the rolling speed. Our new high-efficiency cooling unit (HEC) pushes the boundaries and increases productivity by up to 20 percent.

    We install our innovative high-efficiency cooling unit (HEC) in the interstand area of your TCM. Crucial here is the counterflow of rolling oil in a strip channel. This facilitates convection cooling.

    The higher cooling efficiency boosts rolling speeds.

    High-efficiency cooling unit
  • Multi-Plate® Filter

    Efficient rolling oil cleaning

    Here is a well-balanced and eco-friendly filter technology for your premium-quality cold rolling mill: the SMS group Multi-Plate® filter.

    Our compact Multi-Plate® filters efficiently clean lubricants contaminated during cold-rolling aluminum and nonferrous metals. You benefit from a modular design that consists mainly of an unwinding device for the filter paper, filter plate stacks, and a filter paper take-up device. First, we prefabricate the components, then assemble them to create your customized Multi-Plate® filter. Once it's completed, we thoroughly test the filter system over several days. That involves simulating your entire filter process. We run through, test, and optimize every single cycle.

    Benefits

    • Compact, modular design
    • Very good accessibility of all components
    • Automatic filter cake removal
    • Filter efficiency up to 0.5 µm

Service modules for your plant

Filter options

Sorry, there are no results for the search term.

Insights on your plants

Show all
Let's get in touch!