The original continuous casting machines were of vertical types. Now most of the continuous casters have either curved mould (Figure 2.3a) or vertical mold with bending rolls.

In the continuous casting, tundish is the important refractory lined vessel. It feeds the molten steel into the molds placed beneath the tundish through a submerged nozzle. Tundish also acts as reservoir of molten steel during ladle change-over periods and sequence casting. Modern tundishes are equipped with furniture like dams, weirs, slotted dams etc. to modify the molten steel flowing in the tundish during the process of continuous casting. Modern developments include thin slab caster, liquid core reduction. Thin slab casters are connected to the strip mill. The objective is to integrate the casting and rolling in order to save reheating cost.

Strip casting is ( Figure 2.3b) also becoming popular in steel plants. Here molten steel is cast directly into the strip. Lectures 33 and 34 describe the process of continuous casting.

Final finishing operations:

It has been considered appropriate to include final finishing operations in steelmaking course to appreciate integration between chemistry and cleanliness of steel and the final finishing operations. It is thought that the reader can appreciate the role of steelmaking in the product development and failure. The following finishing operations are dealt with in lectures 35,36 and 37.

• Deformation processing technologies like forging rolling etc.
• Heat treatment to produce the finished product. Heat treatment consists of heating the steel products to a temperature in the austenitic region and then cooling.
• Surface hardening treatment

References:

• Chakrabarti: Steel making