High-tech slab caster for Voestalpine Stahl, Austria

Because of this, their technical team chose Danieli as their partner to design and manufacture the latest, state-of-the-art casting machine, incorporating the best available technology, with the ambitious target of putting into operation the best caster in the world. The new CC8 caster will replace the CC3, which has been in operation for 40 years, and will be located in the middle of the LD3 steelmaking plant. This means that perfect coordination will be required during the civil works and installation phase because the other casting plants will continue to operate normally.

Both activities will be carried out by Voestalpine with the advisory services of Danieli. The new caster will produce slabs with a nominal thickness of 225 mm and widths from 800 to 1,820 mm. The design also will take into account a future slab thicknesses of 285 mm. Considering the specific product mix to be assigned to CC8 the single-strand machine will have a design capacity of up to 1,200,000 tpy of slabs. The wide product range includes electrical steels with a silicon content greater than 2.0%, ULC, LC, structural steels (including micro-alloyed), presshardening grades, HC, and special steel grades (TRIP, 9% nickel). The caster will be designed not only to fulfill the current quality requirements, but also to meet demands arising from developments expected to take place over the next few years in terms of product quality, especially with respect to high-strength crackprone steel qualities for the automotive market. The caster has a main radius of 9.0 m with a vertical length of 2.6 m and a metallurgical length of more than 31 m in order to achieve a maximum casting speed of 1.8 mpm.