Posted on 08 Feb 2017
Tertiary metallurgy center makes speciality steels for the aerospace industry
At its Stocksbridge site, Tata Steel´s Speciality Steels, UK, has successfully commissioned the VIM X-eed® vacuum induction melting furnace supplied by SMS Mevac.
This new tertiary metallurgy facility produces high-purity steels and specialty alloys for the aerospace industry.
The VIM unit at Tata Steel comprises an eight-ton vacuum induction melting crucible and the associated vacuum pumping, material charging and process control equipment. All core components supplied by SMS Mevac have been designed to allow Tata Steel to increase the melt size to 18 tons at a later date. Also ancillary equipment for crucible preheating and lining maintenance was included in the supply scope. The unit incorporates vacuum pouring equipment for both top poured and bottom poured ingots, in single or multiple ingot configurations.
Before the ingots are rolled or forged into products for the aerospace market, they are refined in Tata Steel’s VAR (Vacuum Arc Re-melting) and/or ESR (Electro Slag Re-melting) facilities. Andrew Douglass, Engineering Director of Tata Steel: “Speciality Steels are delighted to have the VIM in operation and producing commercial grades for sale and customer acceptance trials”.
Jochen Schlüter, Managing Director of SMS Mevac: “We are very proud of having installed and successfully commissioned the new VIM X-eed® facility in Stocksbridge in close collaboration with Tata. As partners of Tata Steel, we will continue to render our extensive metallurgical expertise to support Tata Steel in developing and producing innovative high-end materials with the newly installed VIM X-eed® unit and responding successfully to the increasing requirements of this extremely exacting market.”
Based on their extensive plant engineering know-how, SMS Mevac, leading providers of hot metal pre-treatment and secondary metallurgy facilities with more than 40 years of plant engineering experience, has expanded its portfolio to include the segment of tertiary metallurgy/special steels. This strategic move into tertiary metallurgy currently incorporates three key melting and remelting technologies, namely VIM, VAR and ESR units. This product area is managed by in-house experts who boast more than twenty years of experience working with leading producers of speciality steels. This know-how and SMS Mevac’s excellent reputation as a supplier of high-performance equipment provide the basis for state-of-the-art plants designed to meet current and future market requirements.
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Production of speciality steels and super alloys at Tata Steel in Stocksbridge, using the new VIM X-eed® unit supplied by SMS group.
