above: The line includes a flattener, a Synergy leveler and an automated stacking and banding area.

November 2022- “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” This statement is credited to Theodore Levitt, a Harvard Business School professor and editor of the Harvard Business Review, who spent his career studying the field of marketing. Although the factors that ultimately contribute to innovation often remain murky, it’s clear that the push of technological progress and the pull of user requirements are big drivers of new manufacturing know-how.

In the coil processing space, long-term relationships often provide this push-pull, including in the case of a new stretch-leveling cut-to-length line recently manufactured by Butech Bliss and installed in Acero Prime Feralloy’s new 338,000-square-foot service center in Sinton, Texas.

        The stretch-leveling cut-to-length line has a 50-foot-long stretch bed.

“Feralloy and Butech started working together in the late 1990s,” says Rick Henke, operations manager at the processing center. “We have purchased everything—scrap choppers, levelers, shears, stackers, retrofits and full-blown processing lines.”

Henke notes that the two companies developed a relationship that has helped both to “stay ahead and on top of the competition. We have ventured down the road of ‘firsts’ in many areas of equipment throughout the years with Butech, and this project was no different.”

ADVANCEMENTS

The idea for what became a stretch-leveling cut-to-length line rated up to 1 inch thick by 84 inches wide, with a 50-foot stretch bed and 2,800 tons of stretching force started with Alex Harrell, corporate project manager. He approached the team at Butech with “a vision of performing beyond where we had been with the addition of automation,” Henke says. “Although our equipment at the time was performing extremely well, we wanted bigger, stronger and faster. With this vision in mind, we ventured down the road of a new design on the stretcher specifically. The commissioning took a little longer than normal, but our collective approach was that progress is not made in the comfort zone.”

Acero Prime Feralloy’s new facility was built to increase the company’s presence in the Gulf Coast region and support customers in the Southwest-West sections of the United States and into Mexico.

“If the mill can make it, we can handle it,” asserts Henke. “We have combined capabilities that have a gauge range of 0.010 inch through 1 inch, with coil weights up to 106,000 pounds. This facility is unique in that we can be processing the painted product in one bay and, three bays over, [we can] be processing some 1-inch by 84-inch-wide hot band. Not too many people can say that.”

The line also features a patented Synergy hydraulic roller leveler capable of handling the entire product range with a single cassette. This design incorporates many features intended to reduce maintenance downtime including a quick-change roll cartridge system and individual driven rolls.

      Built-in recipes guide the operator to a starting point based on the coil information.

MIGHTY FORCE

“The stretcher is far more powerful than what we have seen elsewhere,” Henke says. “Most of the stretchers we have range around 1,800 tons of stretch force; the one in Sinton has 2,800 tons of stretch force. The line includes both a flattener and a Synergy leveler along with an automated stacking and banding area.”

Butech flexed its technical creativity muscle, where its huge new direct acting stretcher was basically a ground-up redesign. This design balances the extreme forces with the ability for quick side change of grippers and gripping media through an easy-access side window. Most innovative is the newly designed patent-pending “quick-change pressure block,” which allows for grip cylinder maintenance and seal changes in a couple hours rather than days.

Butech stretch-leveling/cut-to-length lines are designed to process multiple materials and material characteristics on the same line. The control system portal is an HMI-based design that enables easy setup changes and uses recipe-driven menus to vary stretch and retract cycle times as well as stretch speeds and clamping pressures. According to Butech, “recipe-driven menus increase productivity and product consistency because the settings can be quickly recalled when repetitive runs are required.”

“The unique leveler design is very easy to operate,” Henke says. “The built-in recipes guide the operator to a starting point based on the coil information. The line can process material from 0.075 inch up to 1 inch thick, and the leveler has rolls that can accommodate both light and heavy gauge without any loss of work roll change over time. This feature allows us to easily run a 14-gauge coil followed by a 1-inch coil and gives us flexibility when scheduling the line.”

So far, he says, customers have been pleased with the performance of the line and the quality of the product coming off it. “We have been producing flat product from the first time we hit run on the line.” -MM