SMS Concast to Supply Vertical Bloom Caster for Timken Faircrest
04/23/2012 - SMS Concast AG has been awarded jointly with SMS Concast America Inc. of Pittsburgh, Pa., a major contract from The Timken Co. to supply a three(four)-strand UHQ vertical bloom casting facility for Timken’s Faircrest steel plant in Canton, Ohio.
SMS Concast AG has been awarded jointly with SMS Concast America Inc. of Pittsburgh, Pa., a major contract from The Timken Co. of Canton, Ohio, to supply a three(four)-strand UHQ (Ultra High Quality) vertical bloom casting facility for Timken’s Faircrest steel plant in Canton.
The new vertical bloom caster (completely vertical with no bending/unbending) will have specialized equipment for the production of highest-quality cast blooms.
SMS Concast is supplying all main equipment for the vertical bloom casting facility including ladle turret, tundish cars, molds and hydraulic oscillation, mold and final stirring (M-EMS and F-EMS), top-fed dummy bar system, pinch roll units, dynamic MSR/MHR units, containment and strand guiding, secondary cooling, inline quenching, and all discharge equipment. In addition, the complete electrical equipment and automation package including level-2 process control will be supplied by SMS Concast.
“We conducted a thorough evaluation of a limited number of quality equipment vendors, and SMS Concast’s caster best met our needs,” said Tom Moline, Vice President of steel manufacturing for Timken. “We continue to see growing demand for Timken® specialty alloy steel bars, and the addition of this caster will bring greater differentiation and expanded capacity of high-quality product to our customers.”
Moline added that the large-bloom continuous caster is central to productivity gains projected by Timken once its recently announced US$225 million investment at the Faircrest facility is complete in 2014. The new caster, along with a new ladle refiner, is expected to increase the Faircrest operation’s shippable capacity by 25%, and enable production of a broader range of large-diameter bars.
The Timken Company provides innovative friction management and power transmission products and services that help machinery perform more efficiently and reliably. It posted sales of US$5.2 billion in 2011 and has approximately 21,000 people operating from locations in 30 countries.
SMS Concast AG, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, is a company of the SMS group which, under the roof of the SMS Holding GmbH, consists of a group of companies internationally active in plant construction and mechanical engineering for the steel and nonferrous metals industry. Being a member of the SMS Meer Business Area, Mönchengladbach, Germany, SMS Concast serves long-product steelmakers worldwide as a provider of comprehensive engineering services, the complete line of meltshop and continuous casting equipment, services, and automation and process control systems.
