rolling mills

In metalworking, rolling is a metal forming process in which metal stock is passed through one or more pairs of rolls to reduce the thickness, to make the thickness uniform, and/or to impart a desired mechanical property. The concept is similar to the rolling of dough. Rolling is classified according to the temperature of the metal rolled. If the temperature of the metal is above its recrystallization temperature, then the process is known as hot rolling. If the temperature of the metal is below its recrystallization temperature, the process is known as cold rolling. In terms of usage, hot rolling processes more tonnage than any other manufacturing process, and cold rolling processes the most tonnage out of all cold working processes... Roll stands holding pairs of rolls are grouped together into rolling mills that can quickly process metal, typically steel, into products such as structural steel (I-beams, angle stock, channel stock), bar stock, and rails. Most steel mills have rolling mill divisions that convert the semi-finished casting products into finished products.

There are many types of rolling processes, including ''ring rolling'', ''roll bending'', ''roll forming'', ''profile rolling'', and ''controlled rolling''.

Iron and steel

The invention of the rolling mill in Europe may be attributed to Leonardo da Vinci in his drawings. The earliest rolling mills in crude form but the same basic principles were found in Middle East and South Asia as early as 600 BCE. Earliest rolling mills were slitting mills, which were introduced from what is now Belgium to England in 1590. These passed flat bars between rolls to form a plate of iron, which was then passed between grooved rolls (slitters) to produce rods of iron. The first experiments at rolling iron for tinplate took place about 1670. In 1697, Major John Hanbury erected a mill at Pontypool to roll 'Pontypool plates' – blackplate. Later this began to be rerolled and tinned to make tinplate. The earlier production of plate iron in Europe had been in forges, not rolling mills.

The slitting mill was adapted to producing hoops (for barrels) and iron with a half-round or other sections by means that were the subject of two patents of c. 1679.

Some of the earliest literature on rolling mills can be traced back to the Swedish engineer Christopher Polhem in his ''Patriotista Testamente'' of 1761, where he mentions rolling mills for both plate and bar iron. He also explains how rolling mills can save on time and labor because a rolling mill can produce 10 to 20 or more bars at the same time.

A patent was granted to Thomas Blockley of England in 1759 for the polishing and rolling of metals. Another patent was granted in 1766 to Richard Ford of England for the first tandem mill.. A tandem mill is one in which the metal is rolled in successive stands; Ford's tandem mill was for hot rolling of wire rods.

Other metals

Rolling mills for lead seem to have existed by the late 17th century. Copper and brass were also rolled by the late 18th century.

Modern rolling

Until well into the eighteenth century, rolling mills derived their power from water wheels. The first recorded use of a steam engine directly driving a mill is attributed to John Wilkinson's Bradley Works where, in 1786, a Boulton and Watt engine was coupled to a slitting and rolling mill. The use of steam engines considerably enhanced the production capabilities of the mills, until this
form of power was displaced by electric motors soon after 1900.

Modern rolling practice can be attributed to the pioneering efforts of Henry Cort of Funtley Iron Mills, near Fareham in Hampshire, England. In 1783, a patent number was issued to Henry Cort for his use of grooved rolls for rolling iron bars. With this new design, mills were able to produce 15 times more output per day than with a hammer.. Although Cort was not the first to use grooved rolls, he was the first to combine the use of many of the best features of various ironmaking and shaping processes known at the time. Thus modern writers have called him "father of modern rolling".

The first rail rolling mill was established by John Birkenshaw at Bedlington Ironworks in Northumberland, England, in 1820, where he produced fish-bellied wrought iron rails in lengths of 15 to 18 feet. With the advancement of technology in rolling mills, the size of rolling mills grew rapidly along with the size of the products being rolled. One example of this was at The Great Exhibition in London in 1851, where a plate 20 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 7/16 of an inch thick, and weighing 1,125 pounds, was exhibited by the Consett Iron Company. Further evolution of the rolling mill came with the introduction of three-high mills in 1853 used for rolling heavy sections.

Hot and cold rolling

Hot rolling

Hot rolling is a metalworking process that occurs above the recrystallization temperature of the material. After the grains deform during processing, they recrystallize, which maintains an equiaxed microstructure and prevents the metal from work hardening. The starting material is usually large pieces of metal, like semi-finished casting products, such as ingots, slabs, blooms, and billets.

File:Ingot.jpg, Ingot lifted from soaking pit
File:Slabs stack.jpg, Photo of cold slabs
File:Steel blooms Hayange.jpg, Steel blooms on rail wagon
File:Celsa Steel Works (30910245794).jpg, Billets on rail wagon

If these products came from a continuous casting operation, the products are usually fed directly into the rolling mills at the proper temperature. In smaller operations, the material starts at room temperature and must be heated. This is done in a gas- or oil-fired soaking pit for larger workpieces; for smaller workpieces, induction heating is used. As the material is worked, the temperature must be monitored to make sure it remains above the recrystallization temperature.

To maintain a safety factor a ''finishing temperature'' is defined above the recrystallization temperature; this is usually 50 to 100 °C (90 to 180 °F) above the recrystallization temperature. If the temperature does drop below this temperature the material must be re-heated prior to additional hot rolling..

Hot-rolled metals generally have little directionality in their mechanical properties or deformation-induced residual stresses. However, in certain instances non-metallic inclusions will impart some directionality and workpieces less than thick often have some directional properties. Non-uniform cooling will induce a lot of residual stresses, which usually occurs in shapes that have a non-uniform cross-section, such as I-beams. While the finished product is of good quality, the surface is covered in mill scale, which is an oxide that forms at high temperatures. It is usually removed via pickling or the smooth clean surface (SCS) process, which reveals a smooth surface. Dimensional tolerances are usually 2 to 5% of the overall dimension..

Hot-rolled mild steel seems to have a wider tolerance for the level of included carbon than does cold-rolled steel, and is, therefore, more difficult for a blacksmith to use. Also for similar metals, hot-rolled products seem to be less costly than cold-rolled ones.

Hot rolling is used mainly to produce sheet metal or simple cross-sections, such as rail tracks. Other typical uses for hot-rolled metal:
*Truck frames
*Automotive clutch plates, wheels and wheel rims
*Pipes and tubes
*Water heaters
*Agricultural equipment
*Strappings
*Stampings
*Compressor shells
*Metal buildings
*Railroad hopper cars and railcar components
*Doors and shelving
*Discs
*Guard rails for streets and highways

Shape rolling design

Rolling mills are often divided into roughing, intermediate and finishing rolling cages. During shape rolling, an initial billet (round or square) with edge of diameter typically ranging between 100 and 140 mm is continuously deformed to produce a certain finished product with smaller cross section dimension and geometry. Starting from a given billet, different sequences can be adopted to produce a certain final product. However, since each rolling mill is significantly expensive (up to 2 million euros), a typical requirement is to reduce the number of rolling passes. Different approaches have been achieved, including empirical knowledge, employment of numerical models, and Artificial Intelligence techniques. Lambiase et al. validated a finite element model (FE) for predicting the final shape of a rolled bar in round-flat pass. One of the major concerns when designing rolling mills is to reduce the number of passes. A possible solution to such requirements is the slit pass, also called split pass, which divides an incoming bar in two or more subparts, thus virtually increasing the cross section reduction ratio per pass as reported by Lambiase.
Another solution for reducing the number of passes in rolling mills is the employment of automated systems for Roll Pass Design as that proposed by Lambiase and Langella. subsequently, Lambiase further developed an Automated System based on Artificial Intelligence and particularly an integrated system including an inferential engine based on Genetic Algorithms a knowledge database based on an Artificial Neural Network trained by a parametric Finite element model and to optimize and automatically design rolling mills.

Cold rolling

Cold rolling occurs with the metal below its recrystallization temperature (usually at room temperature), which increases the strength via strain hardening up to 20%. It also improves the surface finish and holds tighter tolerances. Commonly cold-rolled products include sheets, strips, bars, and rods; these products are usually smaller than the same products that are hot rolled. Because of the smaller size of the workpieces and their greater strength, as compared to hot rolled stock, four-high or cluster mills are used. Cold rolling cannot reduce the thickness of a workpiece as much as hot rolling in a single pass.

Cold-rolled sheets and strips come in various conditions: ''full-hard'', ''half-hard'', ''quarter-hard'', and ''skin-rolled''. Full-hard rolling reduces the thickness by 50%, while the others involve less of a reduction. Cold rolled steel is then annealed to induce ductility in the cold rolled steel which is simply known as a ''Cold Rolled and Close Annealed''. Skin-rolling, also known as a ''skin-pass'', involves the least amount of reduction: 0.5–1%. It is used to produce a smooth surface, a uniform thickness, and reduce the yield point phenomenon (by preventing Lüders bands from forming in later processing). It locks dislocations at the surface and thereby reduces the possibility of formation of Lüders bands. To avoid the formation of Lüders bands it is necessary to create substantial density of unpinned dislocations in ferrite matrix. It is also used to break up the spangles in galvanized steel. Skin-rolled stock is usually used in subsequent cold-working processes where good ductility is required.

Other shapes can be cold-rolled if the cross-section is relatively uniform and the transverse dimension is relatively small. Cold rolling shapes requires a series of shaping operations, usually along the lines of sizing, breakdown, roughing, semi-roughing, semi-finishing, and finishing.

If processed by a blacksmith, the smoother, more consistent, and lower levels of carbon encapsulated in the steel makes it easier to process, but at the cost of being more expensive.

Typical uses for cold-rolled steel include metal furniture, desks, filing cabinets, tables, chairs, motorcycle exhaust pipes, computer cabinets and hardware, home appliances and components, shelving, lighting fixtures, hinges, tubing, steel drums, lawn mowers, electronic cabinetry, water heaters, metal containers, fan blades, frying pans, wall and ceiling mount kits, and a variety of construction-related products.

Processes

Roll bending

Roll bending produces a cylindrical shaped product from plate or steel metals
.

Roll forming

Roll forming, roll bending or plate rolling is a continuous bending operation in which a long strip of metal (typically coiled steel) is passed through consecutive sets of rolls, or stands, each performing only an incremental part of the bend, until the desired cross-section profile is obtained. Roll forming is ideal for producing parts with long lengths or in large quantities.
There are three main processes: 4 rollers, 3 rollers and 2 rollers, each of which has as different advantages according to the desired specifications of the output plate.

Flat rolling

Flat rolling is the most basic form of rolling with the starting and ending material having a rectangular cross-section. The material is fed in between two ''rollers'', called ''working rolls'', that rotate in opposite directions. The gap between the two rolls is less than the thickness of the starting material, which causes it to deform. The decrease in material thickness causes the material to elongate. The friction at the interface between the material and the rolls causes the material to be pushed through. The amount of deformation possible in a single pass is limited by the friction between the rolls; if the change in thickness is too great the rolls just slip over the material and do not draw it in. The final product is either sheet or plate, with the former being less than thick and the latter greater than; however, heavy plates tend to be formed using a press, which is termed ''forging'', rather than rolling.

Often the rolls are heated to assist in the workability of the metal. Lubrication is often used to keep the workpiece from sticking to the rolls. To fine-tune the process, the speed of the rolls and the temperature of the rollers are adjusted.

For thin sheet metal with a thickness less than , the rolling is done in a '' cluster mill'' because the small thickness requires a small diameter rolls. To reduce the need for small rolls ''pack rolling'' is used, which rolls multiple sheets together to increase the effective starting thickness. As the foil sheets come through the rollers, they are trimmed and slitted with circular or razor-like knives. Trimming refers to the edges of the foil, while slitting involves cutting it into several sheets. Aluminum foil is the most commonly produced product via pack rolling. This is evident from the two different surface finishes; the shiny side is on the roll side and the dull side is against the other sheet of foil.

Ring rolling

Ring rolling is a specialized type of hot rolling that increases the diameter of a ring. The starting material is a thick-walled ring. This workpiece is placed between two rolls, an inner ''idler roll'' and a ''driven roll'', which presses the ring from the outside. As the rolling occurs the wall thickness decreases as the diameter increases. The rolls may be shaped to form various cross-sectional shapes. The resulting grain structure is circumferential, which gives better mechanical properties. Diameters can be as large as and face heights as tall as . Common applications include railway tyres, bearings, gears, rockets, turbines, airplanes, pipes, and pressure vessels..

Structural shape rolling

Controlled rolling

''Controlled rolling'' is a type of thermomechanical processing which integrates controlled deformation and heat treating. The heat which brings the workpiece above the recrystallization temperature is also used to perform the heat treatments so that any subsequent heat treating is unnecessary. Types of heat treatments include the production of a fine grain structure; controlling the nature, size, and distribution of various transformation products (such as ferrite, austenite, pearlite, bainite, and martensite in steel); inducing precipitation hardening; and, controlling the toughness

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