On 11 October 2013, Mr. Erich Meixner, executive director of voestalpine Draht GmbH, and Mr. Fabrizio Mulinaris, executive vice president of Danieli, signed a contract for an ultra-modern H3 wire rod and bar-in-coil line for the production of special steel coils. The plant will be installed in the existing buildings of voestalpine Draht site in Leoben, a Styrian city in the middle of Austria.
 
The first ideas and concepts of the wire rod lines of the future were sketched in October 2011 when requests from the market and sharing of some ideas with selected wire rod customers becomes true. The first steps and concepts of the H3 wire rod line were developed starting for the main water cooling line working on features for a very fast and reliable production change, modular and interchangeable pre-finishing wire rod blocks with multiple drive configuration, a latest design twin module block acting as a sizing mill with multiple drive configuration too and an ultra-modern loop laying head suitable for a very high-speed production. Implementation to these new working conditions has been done on the controlled cooling conveyor to optimize the air distribution system through the rollers and fans. An optimized system for the best coil shape formation, with tying and handling is granted by the Swedish company Sund-Birsta, indisputable leader in this field.
 
In the last years Danieli Morgårdshammar efforts have been concentrated to improve the final product quality as well as to increase the operation flexibility and to reduce maintenance and operation costs of the modern rolling mills.
 
Based on a 150 t/h capacity reheating furnace the plant will be capable to roll 150x150x18,000 mm billets with weights of 3,100 kg approximately for the production of wire rod from 5 to 25 mm diameter with option of 4.5 mm and coiled rounds from 18 to 60 mm dia in various special steel grades including: Case hardening, soft grades, cold heading, high carbon, bearing steel, welding wire cold working, free-cutting and spring steels in hot, normalizing an low temperature rolling and subsequent in line processes with natural, fast and retarded cooling. The mill can also process lean and super duplex, manganese-hard steel and austenitic stainless grades. A latest generation roughing/intermediate mill composed with SHSPlus cartridge stands fitted with automatic stand changing cars. Automatic shears are dislocated along the mill for automatic sampling/head and tail bar cutting operation. 50-m-long roller table with insulated covering hoods is placed after the roughing mill for “free bar” space for high-speed roughing operation. The supply will include an induction furnace supplied by Danieli Automation and a second water pressure descaler for secondary scale removal before intermediate mill entering. The core of the system is the “state of the art” two 2-stand and one 8-stand PFB pre-finishing blocks, TMB-sizing blocks with multiple drive configuration and two high-speed shear, including contiloop and high-efficiency water boxes for LTR-Low Temperature Rolling. The 4-stand Twin Module Block as sizing mill is provided for wire rod finishing at 110 m/s rolling operation (140 m/s design speed) and for excellent size tolerances (+/-0.1 mm with 50% ovality on the whole wire rod products).
 
A double pipe oil film bearing laying head, a 135-meter-long multi-step roller conveyor fitted with high-efficiency cooling fans and hoods, a RRT-Rotary Reforming Tube and ESD-Easy Down System by Sund Birsta assuring a perfect coil formation of weight up to 3.1 tons.
 
A bar-in-coil line will be installed nearly the H3 wire rod mill for the production of large bar-in-coil production up to 60 mm dia rolled products. The line includes scratch free-conveyors with pinch rolls and diverters, some water boxes for temperature control, a couple of SHSPlus rolling stands in alternate H-V arrangement, one CSU-Compact Sizing Unit composed of two rolling modules individually driven, arranged in H-V configuration acting as sizing stand for coiled rounds products to achieve close tolerances. Two latest generation Garret coilers will grants superior finished products, in terms of coil shape/size and surface quality thanks to its advanced design and associated feeding/delivery equipment.
 
For both Wire Rod and Bar in Coil lines, the most advanced on-line heat treatment are foresee enabling to eliminate (or minimize) traditional off-line downstream processes.
 
Sund-Birsta will supply a complete handling system for both wire rod and bar-in-coil line. The technology proposed on the finishing coil end will be the SUNDCO V-H including pallet transporting system, sampling, press and tying stations, discharging and collecting facilities for heavy coils.
 
Danieli Automation will install the Level 1, the integration of level 2 automation, DLPP-Danieli Long Product Predictor connection for on-line setup of the lines, OWS-Operating Workstation System and 3Q Automation (including new generation full touch screen operator interfaces). Erection and supervision to erection will complete the supply. The plant is expected to play the first trials on first quarter of 2016.