In the SE of China, in the province Zhejiang, the Ningbo Baoxin Stainless Steels Corporation is building a stainless steel cold rolling mill complex with three rolling mills. After ABB had already been involved in the building of the first two rolling mills, the technology group is now supplying the automation and electrical components of cold rolling mill 3 (CRM 3). On completion in 2004, the rolling mill complex will have a total capacity of 135,000 tons per year. CRM3 is a 20 high reversing mill stand for sheet metals with a final thickness between 0.2 mm and 2 mm and a maximum coil weight of 31 t. Three ACS6000 medium voltage drives using ABB’s patented DTC control principle are used for the roller and coiler drives. In addition ABB supplies ACS600 three-phase AC auxiliary drives, which are equipped with direct torque control, too. The scope of supply also includes IndustrialIT-based process control equipment. Three stations equipped with ControlIT AC450 controllers will process the 2500 I/O signals of the plant. The visualisation system OperateIT consists of 3 workstations with an appropriate number of operator terminals. Furthermore ABB will supply the sensors and instrumentation of the rolling mill such as strip tension and thickness measurement as well as laser velocity measurement.
