Nippon Steel & Sumikin Stainless Steel Corporation (NSSC) announced on Wednesday the firm renewed ancillary facility of the steel sheet mill inside Hikari iron works, Yamaguchi, Japan and commissioned the facility. The firm scraped decrepit 3 coil build up lines and installed a new coil build up line. The new line is interlocked with hot annealing and pickling processes, which contributes to shorter delivery lead time. The productivity more than doubled by installment of new raiser welding technology and automated equipments. The works also streamlined logistics inside the plant by layout change of the equipments.
The new coil build up line (LCB) equips a disk raiser welding machine, which is the first steel making facility to install a disk raiser welding machine in the world. Welding lead time largely shortens as well as welding dimension widens for different-thick materials. The installment took 2 years. The new facility is also designed to fail-safe in the case of machine troubles or operative mistakes. Hikari iron works utilizes a space of disposed lines for a material yard. Material transfer capacity was also streamlined for higher logistics efficiency inside the plant. Hikari iron works presently prepares for installment of a new melting furnace and conversion of an existing rotary hearth furnace for recovery of rare metal recovery toward the completion scheduled in September 2012.