Cold Rolling Workshop: Smart Brain Helps Improve Production Efficiency by 30%

"Why is the workshop so dark?"

"The production line here is smart enough to run automatically without turning on the lights. It is a veritable 'black light factory'." Walking into the smart hot-dip galvanizing workshop of a cold rolling factory in China, the director of the No. 4 cold rolling branch said proudly.

As soon as the lights are turned on, you will find that the driving above the workshop is shuttling back and forth with a cold-rolled steel coil with a diameter of about 2 meters. "Traveling usually requires workers to operate. Through intelligent empowerment, unmanned driving itself knows how to find the required steel coils from the warehouse area according to the production plan, and then transport them to the designated location." The factory implemented an overall plan for the cold rolling workshop With the intelligent transformation, the two hot-dip galvanizing units have been upgraded intelligently.

Moving forward along the production line, 32 technical improvement projects came into view one by one.

Let's look at the unbundling robot first. In the past, steel coils were moved between different processes, requiring manual bundling and unbundling. Especially when unbundling, workers need to use pliers to cut open the steel rolling belt, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and also poses safety risks: the steel coil, which is as tall as one person and weighs about 25 tons, can easily hurt people when it bounces off. After transformation, this work is handed over to robots, which is efficient and safe.

After the steel coil is unbundled, it enters the unit, uncoiled, automatically welded, cleaned, and then enters the continuous annealing furnace for high-temperature annealing. After the annealed strip is rapidly cooled, it enters the zinc pot, which realizes the hot-dip galvanizing process. The steel coils, which are more than 3,000 meters long and more than 1,000 meters short, are spread out like cloth in a dyeing workshop, winding up and down and rolling forward inside the 7-story annealing furnace.

The scene is spectacular and the workload is heavy. Steel coils are wound on countless rollers during operation. In the past, in order to find abnormalities in the rollers, workers in each shift had to walk from the first floor to the seventh floor for inspection, and it took 2 to 3 hours for one trip. Now, the inspection robot can automatically inspect it every 4 hours, and remind workers to check and repair if there is an abnormality. The work efficiency is improved and the labor load is also reduced.

Going forward, there is the world's first zinc pot electromagnetic skimming system. In the galvanizing process, zinc oxide impurities are formed when liquid zinc comes into contact with air. In order to ensure the quality of finished products such as automobile panels, zinc oxide must be slag suppressed, slag driven, and slag removed. In the past, workers had to wear heat-resistant clothing and scoop out impurities with long-handled large spoons. After the transformation, relying on the electromagnetic scum skimming technology, the zinc oxide is gathered together, and then fished out by the slag scooping robot, realizing unmanned.

Furnace closed-loop, lye recovery, energy-environment intelligent online, zinc layer closed-loop, humidification and slag suppression, edge thickness gauge, sampling robot... A series of intelligent applications have greatly reduced the labor force of the production line. Only 4 operators are required for one shift of each line. They are controlled in the centralized control room in the middle of the workshop, and monitor various production parameters of the entire line in front of the computer and large screen, which greatly reduces the workload. In addition, intelligent manufacturing also brings benefits such as cost reduction, efficiency increase, energy saving and consumption reduction. According to reports, since the transformation of this digital workshop, comprehensive pollutants per ton of steel have decreased by 30%, production efficiency has increased by 30%, production capacity has increased by 20%, energy consumption per ton of steel has decreased by 15%, and processing costs have decreased by 10%.

There are two main aspects to the intelligent transformation of the steel plant: one is to add a large number of sensors, cameras, and detection devices to the original equipment, so that equipment and equipment, equipment and systems can be connected; the other is to use the "smart brain" to The device is controlled. At the same time, to meet the two needs of large-scale and customized steel production, the "smart brain" is very important. From the beginning of the steelmaking process, the molten steel must be customized according to the needs of different orders, and the same is true for hot rolling and cold rolling. To this end, the personnel of the steel mill input the production mechanism and the experience of the "master" into the system, supplemented by artificial intelligence, so that the system can make scientific and efficient decisions. In the future, with data accumulation, experience precipitation, and algorithm upgrades, the 'brain' will become more intelligent and production will be more efficient.

Here, the overall goal of intelligent manufacturing is summarized into four points. One is "all operating rooms are centralized", that is, the original relatively scattered operating rooms will be transformed remotely and centralized, at least to achieve "one production line, one operating room" or a higher degree of concentration, thereby greatly improving work efficiency; the second is "operating posts All robots", especially in dirty, dangerous, and highly repetitive positions, priority is given to using robots to replace humans to reduce labor intensity and safety risks; the third is "all remote operation and maintenance", that is, to connect some general-purpose equipment to the equipment intelligent operation and maintenance platform , improve operating efficiency through real-time monitoring, early warning, and remote diagnosis; fourth, "all service links are online", which means that all processes and business of steel external supply chain services are completed on the platform.

At present, about 80 main production lines in the base have realized intelligent manufacturing to varying degrees. In addition to the production and manufacturing links, equipment management, energy environment, logistics and transportation, safety production, etc. have also taken the wings of digitalization, helping the average annual growth of steel production per capita by about 8%.