Robotic coating and melting technology are applied to repair wide copper plates.

Recently, Beijing Shougang Co., Ltd. successfully doubled its steel handling capacity with the continuous casting slab mold copper plates developed and manufactured by Beijing Shougang Machinery & Electric Co., Ltd. (Machinery & Electric Company) compared with the traditional process, which indicates that Shougang has made breakthroughs in the robotic coating and melting technology of mold copper plates, reaching the leading level in China.

The mold is the most critical component in a continuous casting production line. It receives molten steel injected from the tundish and solidifies it into a slab shell according to the specified cross-section shape, and its structure, material and performance parameters play a decisive role in slab quality and caster production capacity. As an important thermally conductive component for solidifying molten steel into a slab shell, it allows the molten steel to flow through the copper plate and crystallize into a slab under the action of external cooling water. In the production process of continuous casting, the dummy bar continuously draws slabs from the mold, causing surface wear on the copper plate which needs to be remanufactured and repaired off the production line. Therefore, the quality of mold copper plates directly affects the drawing speed and slab quality of continuous casters, and their steel handling capacity even affects the production efficiency and cost of continuous casting.

In order to constantly improve its competitiveness in the service field of the iron and steel industry, the Machinery & Electric Company began to research and develop repair and remanufacturing technology for mold copper plates in 2009, and later introduced mature coating repair technology for mold copper plates at home and abroad. Through absorption and continuous process improvement, the Machinery & Electric Company has increased its steel handling capacity of mold copper plates to 100,000 tons and realized their Shougang-style remanufacturing, becoming one of the few professional manufacturers in China to master the core remanufacturing technology of mold copper plates.

Being high-end, intelligent and green is the only way to achieve the transition and upgrading of manufacturing. In recent years, against the backdrop of the "dual carbon" goals, the Machinery & Electric Company has accelerated its "green transition". In 2018, it formally established a project to develop green manufacturing technology for mold copper plates and set up a special project research team. Since then, it has embarked on a long road of green manufacturing technology R&D. After more than 2,000 days and nights of hard work, the project's research team overcame six technological barriers one by one, broke through the "bottlenecks" of increasing the steel handling capacity and formed unique robotic coating and melting technology for mold copper plates. Compared with the original repair technology, the robotic coating and melting technology is greener, more environmentally friendly and more efficient, the whole production process is automatically controlled and the operation is more digital and intelligent. In terms of the practical application effect, with the aid of the robotic coating and melting technology, the steel handling capacity of mold copper plates has more than doubled compared with the original technology, which has greatly reduced the shutdown frequency of the continuous casting production line, improved the continuous casting operation rate and lowered the production cost per ton of steel.

In March 2023, Beijing Shougang Co., Ltd. put the mold copper plates produced by the Machinery & Electric Company using robotic coating and melting technology into trial use for the first time. Compared with traditional technology, the steel handling capacity has doubled, which also indicates that the Machinery & Electric Company's robotic coating and melting technology for mold copper plates have reached the leading level in China. In August, mold copper plates remanufactured by the new technology were put into trial use in Shougang Jingtang, and they are still currently in use and running stably.

The breakthrough of the Machinery & Electric Company in robotic coating and melting technology for mold copper plates is a concrete achievement for promoting technological innovation to become the chief competitiveness of Shougang. Looking ahead, the Machinery & Electric Company will continue to lead comprehensive innovation through technological innovation, vigorously enhance the green manufacturing technology capability, production support capability and comprehensive service capability of enterprises, and strive to build a competitive and influential core business and advantageous business in the manufacturing field, thereby contributing to the high-quality development of Shougang.