A safety PLC from ABB has provided the platform for Sandvik Materials Technology to add zoned safety guarding to a cold rolling mill at its Sandviken plant in Sweden. The mill has been upgraded a number of times throughout its life – including recent changes that added servomotors, and new machine control using ABB's standard AC500 PLC and touchscreen operator interface panels.

The harsh environments encountered in the steel industry place huge technical demands on plant and machinery used here. Watt Drive (part of the WEG Group) helical bevel gearboxes are being used in a new straightening unit at steel producer ArcelorMittal’s plant in Belval, Luxembourg.

Variable speed drives have helped a manufacturer of circlips to cut production stoppages – from typically three a week to none – as well as saving £11,000 a year in energy costs.

A specialist UK-based steel manufacturer looks set to save around £68,000 a year on energy costs of its pumping applications following the installation of five industrial drives.

The existing DC main drives of a hot rolling finishing mill at Aperam's stainless steel plant in Châtelet, Belgium are to be replaced with more powerful AC systems supplied by Siemens, as part of a project of modernisation plans within Aperam's Leadership Journey to reduce costs and improve profitability.

A batch control system at the Alloa glassworks in Scotland, owned by Owens of Illinois has been upgraded by Boulting Electrical Systems.

Vacon has delivered over 300 variable-speed AC drives with a total power of 58 megawatts to Indian-based AnRak Aluminium for use in a new aluminium refinery that is being built near the City of Visakhapatnam in India's southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh.

Tata Steel’s Scunthorpe steel plant produces carbon steel by the basic oxygen method. The existing pressurised oxygen plant produced high pressure oxygen at 42 Bar for steel production, but the three operating blast furnaces only require an 11 Bar supply. Producing oxygen at 42 Bar and then reducing it to 11 Bar was not cost-effective which led the company to look for a more efficient solution.

CEE looks at a quality-control technology which is being transferred from its traditional applications in pulp and paper to the metal industry.

Engineering Steel Belgium (ESB) is saving €45,000 per annum on the operation of three cooling pumps on one of its electrical steel furnaces, since the installation of three WEG W22 132 kW, IE2 high efficiency motors, controlled by WEG CFW-09 variable speed drives.

Antti Jaatinen, project manager of Minerals Processing Applications at Metso Automation, explains how automation and wireless technologies can provide benefits for customers involved in aggregates production.

TATA Steel in Scunthorpe produces a range of steel slab, billets, structural sections, rail and wire rod the focus at the plant is always on efficiencies, with close attention being paid to process improvement strategies in all areas of production.

Yokogawa Electric Corporation has been selected by Andritz as a global partner for the provision of process control systems, field instruments, and process analysers for their customers’ metal and pulp and paper plants.