Installation of a new streamline in the cold-drawing shop is a part of the long-term development program for Centravis Production Ukraine manufacture facilities that consists of both a technical upgrade and service level improvement phases. The streamline consists of a set of manufacturing units for consequent production of high-quality tubes. This project has been estimated at USD 15 million. The total investment in the manufacture facility development program will make up USD 115 million by 2008-end. The new line product range comprises austenitic steel tubes from 10 to 60mm of outer full diameter with wall thicknesses of 1 to 4mm and the maximum ready product length of 26m. Working non-stop, the streamline mill be capable of producing up to 8000tn tubes annually. Preference will be given to producing heat exchanger tubing for nuclear power engineering, as it is this tubing that special quality requirements are set forth for. A new streamline processing technology being introduced and new equipment will ensure performance growth (more than twice), improvement of tube quality and decrease of unit metal consumption, and will allow skipping pickling operations as well as a dramatic deduction of transport time and costs. The methods of liquid lubricant cold-drawing of tubes, water detergent solution cleaning, bright annealing and conveying constitute the working principle of the streamline. The up-to-date line equipment consists of clod-drawing mills, a hydrogen annealing furnace, a 10 skew roll reeler, a 12 section grinding and polishing unit, nondestructive tube testing units with simultaneous detection of diameter and wall thickness dimensions, a non-abrasive tube cutting machine with precise required length shaping.
