Patent Application
20120073344
This invention describes an improvement made to U.S. Pat. No. 7,257,976.
This invention relates to steelmaking techniques by rolling the hot work product into a bar or wire and using a cooler between the various rolling stages. Basically the improvement resides in using a split cooler which may be easily taken apart when the hot work product breaks while being manufactured. The hot work product produces “cobbles” which generally are hot pieces of the metal and these pieces may be found in each cooler when such breakage of the hot work product occurs.
The occurrence of such an event causes a rather large time delay in the production of steel in the rolling process and it is here that the present invention makes its presence felt. The split cooler of this invention may be taken apart quite easily so that any foreign debris may be removed quickly and the cooling device re-assembled so that the steel mill is working again in a much shorter time than with the prior art cooling models.
Two substantially hollow shells are clamped together above a suitable water header by a suitable clamping device. Four split tubular coolers are mounted in a suitable fashion in the shells of the device. A coolant substance (usually water) is introduced into the cooler device from a water supply from below the device. Water is allowed to enter the two half shells from below and the water is fed to a number of plenums which extend around the split tubes and from these plenums coolant water flows through the cooling apertures in the split tubes where it impinges on the hot steel workpiece and then escapes from the cooler device through especially designed escape routes. These escape routes include, exits in the shells shown at the ends of the split cooling tubes (located at the middle of the shells) and at each end of the split tube where the hot workpiece enters and leaves the cooler.
When a breakage occurs in the hot metal product (which is undergoing reduction) it is a relatively straightforward procedure to unclamp this cooler containing hot metal product (as well as any other coolers containing the hot metal product being rolled) from the water trunk line, and remove the hot metal product therefrom.
Re-assembly occurs and the line of coolers is soon ready to receive the hot steel product.
Reference may now be had to exploded view
Shells 14 and 16 are held together by suitable clamping means (not shown) and half tubes 20-26 are suitably located and held in place by bolts 52-70.
A pair of dowels 72 and 74 are shown in
The cooler 10 functions as follows. A work product 76 is threaded into the steel reducing mill which includes passage through coolers such as the cooler shown as 10 in
The coolers such as the one shown in
Work product 76 is threaded through the system which includes the cooling system comprising coolers such as cooler 10 and the cooling water is running with water cooling the work product 76 at each cooler located thereat. All is well until a workpiece 76 strand breaks and a broken part of the work product remains in a cooler. With prior art models the broken work product has to be pushed out of the cooling chamber so that the cooler 10 is ready for a new workpiece 76 to be inserted therein.
With this invention, the cooling water is turned off, the clamp is released and the cooler is removed from the header. The shells 14 and 16 are separated and the split tubes 24 and 26 remain with the half shell 14 while split tubes 20 and 22 remain with half shell such as 12. Now all that is left for the operator to do is to pick out the broken piece of the work product 76 that was previously passing through and re-assemble the cooler and clamp it in place on the header.
The system may be restarted with the work product 76 passing through the mill components as previously.
Many modifications and other embodiments of the invention will come to mind of one skilled in the art, having the benefit of the teachings presented in the foregoing description and the associated drawings. Therefore, it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited to the specific embodiments disclosed, and that the modifications and embodiments are intended to be included within the scope of the dependent claims.
