In February 2014, State Key Laboratory of Rolling and Automation, Northeastern University (RAL) and Chongqing Academy of Science and Technology (CAST) signed an agreement of Chongqing municipal government technology development project, to develop a magnesium alloy special test mill for CAST. The mill will be mainly used in warm rolling experments of short piece (single) magnesium alloy strip, and rolling of other metal materials which are hard to deform.
The rolling mill is a 250mm four roller reversible hydraulic tension warm rolling mill, which has the advanced functions of asynchronous rolling, roller heating, micro tension control, contact-type automatic temperature measurement, and ply rolling. For the first time, the casting base is used to install the rolling mill, the speed reducer and the main motor and so on, which avoids the disadvantages of the traditional installation method of the civil engineered base and realizes the "portable" installation of the rolling mill equipment. From June to August 2015 the parts and materials of the mill were sent to RAL successively to assemble. By the end of August, RAL completed the overall debugging and operation training, and received high recognition from CAST. The 4.0mm thick magnesium alloy sheet can be warm rolled into 0.3mm sheet, and using ply rolling and temperature control, it can be rolled into 0.15mm magnesium alloy sheet. On October 8, the equipment arrived in CAST. After 3 weeks’ busy installation and commissioning work, the equipment passed the acceptance check on November 3.
Fig. 1 Carrying out warm rolling test in RAL
Fig. 2 CAST carrying out warm rolling test
Fig. 3 Strip Steel ply rolled to the minimum thickness of 0.049mm
Fig. 4 The surface of roller heated to more than 250℃
Fig. 5 Testing samples of CAST magnesium alloy warm rolling