Laminazione Sottile issued a final acceptance for the new hot finishing mill installed at its Caserta plant in Italy, following an extensive period of trial production and performance tests. The hot finishing mill from MINO enhances an already impressive setup, making it one of the world’s few plants capable of casting 600 mm slabs and rolling them to ultra-thin gauges using equipment from a single manufacturer.
Integrated with the existing 1 + 1 MINO hot rolling line and hot roughing stand, the new hot finishing mill enables a streamlined process. The roughing stand handles initial passes, transforming slabs into transfer bars, while the finishing mill performs the final precision passes. This configuration significantly improves thickness uniformity, strip profile, and surface quality. Some of the main improvements in the process are due to the dedicated mechanical design of the mill stand together with advanced control of all actuators for thickness and strip flatness.
The hot finishing mill includes an integrated side trimmer and scrap chopper for precise on-line edge trimming, as well as two down-coilers with unload cars, enabling versatile rolling schedules. The innovative down-coiler design ensures a defect-free upper strip surface, ideal for downstream processes. It also features cutting-edge medium voltage AC drives with synchronous motors.
Better quality of the strip surface also derives from better coolant control and specific tribology, optimized for performing only the final passes at the finishing stand. In fact, such configuration allows the use of specific emulsion formulation and roll roughness in the hot finishing mill, which will not be compromised by the need to avoid refusals in the first roughing passes.
The hot finishing mill is capable of processing strip with a maximum width of 2,150 mm and a minimum achievable thickness of 2.5 mm for soft alloys and 3.0 mm for hard alloys. It has a powerful 3,500 t maximum rolling force.
In addition, the mill features advanced process control systems, with automatic gauge control (AGC) and profile measurement. It also includes a sophisticated Self-Learning L2 system, developed with CSM (Centro Sviluppo Materiali), ensuring precise control over thickness, strip profile, and final coil temperature.
Ongoing Collaboration
Founded in 1923, Laminazione Sottile is a leader in thin-gauge aluminum rolling and part of the Laminazione Sottile Group. With subsidiaries across Italy, the U.K., Turkey, Germany, Korea, the U.S., and Canada, the group produces a vast array of aluminum products for industries such as packaging, automotive, aerospace, cookware, building, and lithium batteries. The company is also particularly strong in some “high-tech product niches” such as aluminum closures for the pharmaceutical industry, caps for carbonate drinks, flexible packaging for cheese or chocolate, and coffee capsules.
Laminazione Sottile’s Caserta plant alone exceeds 120,000 tonnes of annual production, offering aluminum coil, sheet, and circle with thicknesses from 6 mm down to an ultra-thin 6 microns. For over 40 years, the company has collaborated with MINO to equip its Caserta facility with cutting-edge rolling technology. This includes a hot mill with twin up-coilers, two cold mills (the latest one commissioned in 2015), and three advanced foil mills (the latest one commissioned in 2022).
The hot finishing mill is the latest addition to the Caserta plant. With this cutting-edge technology, Laminazione Sottile now operates Italy’s only 1 + 1 hot rolling line and one of the few in Europe. This investment cements the company’s position at the forefront of aluminum rolling, combining increased efficiency with unparalleled product quality.