GMB Heavy Industries has recently completed the first phase of a Cooling Bed carriages repair and equipment replacement in one of the largest and major rolling mills in United States.
Why did the Steel Mill decide to repair/revamp their Cooling Bed carriages?
To be successful in the North American steel industry, steel mills must produce a high quality finished product in order to be profitable when with other rolling mills. The main issue with the current Cooling Bed at this steel mill was corrosion, wear and tear of the bed as upgrades had not been performed for several years.
Scope of work:
The GMB engineering team traveled to the rolling mill to conduct a survey and inspection of the current Cooling Bed. After evaluating the result of the visual inspection and engineering surveys of the Cooling Bed, a detailed proposal was prepared.
The focus was to rebuild the entire Cooling Bed over various phases. Phase one would include the top-side engineering and rebuild. Phase one would be completed in three stages. GMB installation team decided to pre-build replacement carriages on-site while the mill continued to produce the product, minimizing any downtime or outage.
In the first phase of this project, GMB planned to design, manufacture, replace and install the first five carriages starting at the Mill End. As per our inspection, it wasn’t necessary to replace/repair the cooling water spray equipment as the current product is still working perfectly fine. Our parts and equipment were designed to work in conjunction with the existing structure/components that will be reused or modified.
Parts Engineered, Manufactured, Supplied and Installed by GMB:
Fixed Support Structure:
- Top Plates were removed and replaced with GMB designed Top Plates; however, the existing support columns are reused.
- All Rake Support beams were redesigned using HSS tubes.
- All Aligning Roll support frames were supplied and installed.
- All Rakes.
- Taper Entry Guides (TEGs) on the Fixed Rakes to guide expanding product.
- Aligning Rolls.
- Existing rolls that can be reused was reconditioned by the Mill to be reinstalled during Phase’s 2 and 3.
Moving Structure:
- All carriages which came with HSS Rake holder beams and carriage support beams.
- All carriage trucks which comes with plain and flanged wheels assemblies.
- All Rakes.
Phase 1 Installation:
GMB Millwrights started the work on pre-assembly on August 29th, 2019 completing the first on September 7th, 2019. During these 10 days, GMB Heavy Industries used eight experienced millwrights to assemble five carriages for the Cooling Bed.
The outage started September 7th, 2019 and continued through September 14th. During the outage, our installations experts removed the old carriages and replaced them with new ones. Five carriages were replaced in seven days. The installation was tested before and after the mill started running production.
The result of this outage was a complete success for GMB Heavy Industries thanks to the dedication of the team involved. Moreover, the new Carriages of the cooling bed are functioning excellent in conjunction with the existing equipment. The Rolling Mill’s managers are extremely appreciated of the performance of their new equipment which was designed, manufactured and installed by GMB Heavy Industries.