Hot Mill Aluminum

Hot Mill Aluminum – Advancing through the ages

Humans have always been in need of cast sheets, out of metals, for their day-to-day work. These sheets have been in regular use since the medieval age of human civilization for the convenience of its habitat. Such sheets are mostly cast out of malleable metals & alloys such as steel, Aluminum etc. In the beginning days, this process of casting sheets was called cold rolling or simply rolling.

Hot Mill Aluminum is the process of manufacturing aluminum from the Aluminum ore.

The process of hot mill rolling finds its traces a far way back-in the 14^th Century. This process was a, rather, tedious one as it comprised of much resource investment with only little profit. In the latter half of 17^th Century, heat energy came into existence in the input process of rolling. The First Hot Rolling Mill was set up in Fontley, Hampshire, in 1779, where Mr. Henry Cort developed the idea which has taken a mammoth form today. His idea received a patent in 1783 for the same. Hot rolling is the name given to this developed process.

Hot Rolling Mills are such mills that perform this Hot Rolling process on a rigorous basis. The process of hot rolling encompass certain sub processes such as cutting bigger metal pieces into smaller, easy malleable ones; applying chemical reactions on them for their deformation, rolling under the action of heat above the re-crystallization of the material  & finally, cooling it to desirable temperature.

The process of hot rolling is also termed as HOT WORKING METALWORKING PROCESS. The larger pieces of metal are cut into smaller ones. These serve as an input to the next sub process. In the next level, these pieces go through a rigorous process of deformation as they pass between a set of rolls. The temperature of this rolling process in kept higher than the re-crystallization temperature of the metal- not allowing it to condense very soon. This process succeeds in utilizing lesser number of rolling cycles to achieve the desirable output, contrary to its cooling counterpart. The annealing process delays & it provides the extended time to help prevent the stress to accumulate in the material. This provides a better life & superior quality with tensile strength to the sheet.

The primary motive of the process is to provide geometric dimensions to the sheet, rather providing them mechanical advantages. Various types of rolling mills are into existence in market today…but they can be superficially divided into two major chunks-The Slab Mills & the Bloom Mills.

Slab Mills facilitate in cutting out a rectangular cross section, while the Boom mills result into, more or less, a square cross section. The ingots are rolled to an average width of around 200 mm. Output from the slab mill goes into coiling & is subsequently used in fabricators, whereas, the boom mill product goes into the manufacturing of channels, beams & truss materials.

It may not be quiet existent, but these hot rolled products form the basis of our daily life be it the aluminum rolls used in the cooler tanks or beams used in construction.