Posted on 08 Nov 2016
More and more plant owners worldwide are relying on services from SMS group
At the beginning of September 2016, Gerdau Ouro Branco signed a three-year contract together with SMS group for servicing and maintenance work on the continuous slab caster and the beam blank and bloom caster at the Ouro Branco works in Brazil. The four-strand beam blank and bloom caster, which went into operation in 2007, has an annual rated capacity of 1.5 million tons. The continuous slab caster commenced production in 2009, at first with only one strand. The second strand went into operation in 2012 and increased the rated capacity of the caster to 3 million tons per year.
The contractually agreed services to be rendered by SMS group include the repair and coating of the copper plates in both casters. This will utilize the UNIGUARD™ technology, which significantly enhances the mold performance thanks to its unique hardness and heat resistance.
Furthermore, SMS group will be responsible for the disassembly/assembly of the caster rolls, for the replacement of spare parts, and for dressing and welding work on the rolls. For this, SMS group will make use of its long-standing experience and proven technologies that are based on several decades of further development by the group of the many different types of materials and know-how in the field of welding engineering.
The repair work will be performed in one of the Brazilian service workshops of SMS group in Vespasiano, close to Belo Horizonte. The workshop is equipped with state-of-the-art and reliable machinery.
“We are very proud that Gerdau has entrusted us with these tasks. It shows that we made the right decision in investing continuously in our staff and in our machinery and mechanical equipment,” says Marcellus Piedade, Vice President of Technical Service for the Brazilian market at SMS group.
UNIGUARD™ coating of a copper mold on an HVOF machine (High Velocity Oxygen-Fuel).
