Our manufacturing processes
Rolled steel: from scrap to high-quality steel
High-quality iron scrap, mainly from Switzerland, is melted down in our 80-ton electric arc furnace EAF. The secondary metallurgical processes then take place in the ladle furnace LF:
- Alloying and micro-alloying of the melt
- Temperature adjustment
- Homogenization
In the next step, eleven meter long steel billets with an edge length of 150 mm are produced on the CCM continuous caster. They form the starting material from which long products in the form of rod and wire are manufactured, tested and further refined in the rolling mill.
Bright steel: The strongest steel solution
Drawing: In drawing, the rolled and descaled starting material is reduced in cross-section by plastic deformation; non-cutting cold forming takes place. The bright steel products produced by this process route are generally characterized by work hardening. After drawing, the bars are straightened by bending and counterbending in the elastic-plastic limit range on straightening lines.
Peeliing: Peeling is a machining process. While various cross-sectional shapes can be produced by drawing, peeled products are always round material. The advantage of peeled bright steel is that the surface is virtually free of starting material defects and edge decarburization. Both drawn and peeled bright steel can be given an even better surface finish and dimensional accuracy by additional grinding and polishing.
Quenching and tempering: For special customer requirements and targeted applications, it is possible to subject our bright steel products to heat treatment. We are able to carry out stress-relief annealing, soft annealing, +U+AC annealing and normalizing in a protective gas atmosphere in the temperature range from 560 °C to 900 °C. For the highest strength requirements, mechanical-technological properties that cannot be realized by conventional means can be set on our inductive single-bar annealing lines.
