Profilglass S.p.A. started up production its new 6-high cold rolling mill and high bay coil storage system at its plant in Fano, Italy. The new mill will enable the production of AA1xxx, AA2xxx, AA3xxx, AA4xxx, AA5xxx and AA6xxx alloy strip to serve demanding industrial sectors, including the automotive, construction, and shipyard industries.
Supplied by MINO, the new cold mill is a state-of-the-art design with an impressive barrel length of 2500 mm, which enables it to produce aluminum strip with a maximum width of 2,350 mm and a minimum gauge of 0.2 mm. The mill includes an entry side trimmer and scrap chopper, EDT pass capabilities, an off-line entry coil preparation system, an off-line exit coil inspection system, an automatic spool transfer device, the most advanced AGC/AFC controls, and powerful medium voltage AC main drives. The mill stand is equipped with MINO’s long stroke shifting system for intermediate rolls, allowing a huge range of different products to be rolled successfully, enabling the facility to cope with large variations in product widths and mechanical characteristics.
The automated high bay coil storage system, also supplied by MINO, has the capacity to store and manage up to 400 coils and is fully integrated with the cold mill. By replacing the traditional coil transfer carousel (floor mounted, pallet type) with the high bay system, the company was able to address the problem of heat build-up in the coils during subsequent rolling passes.
The high bay system provides automatic tracking of the aluminum coils and their transfer through the cold rolling process. This is part of the mill’s level 2 automation, which fulfills the recipes for each product — not only in terms of rolling mill set-up, but also in terms of coil handling, coil tracking, and cooling time between passes.
Since it was founded by Giancarlo Paci in 1982, Profilglass has become the fastest growing Italian company in the aluminum rolling sector. In a few short years, the company’s factory area grew from 7,000 to over 300,000 sq m in size and from 20 to over 1,000 employees. Today, the company produces close to 250,000 tonnes of aluminum products per year, which are exported to more than 85 countries worldwide. Profilglass produces a very wide range of rolled products for diverse applications, including 3xxx strip for building applications, 6xxx strip for auto body sheet (under the company name of LamiAl), aluminum circles for the cookware industry, 5xxx plates for the shipyard industry, stucco coils, and spacers and decorative profiles for double glazing.
Profilglass and MINO have a long history of cooperation going back to 2001, when the first contract for the supply of a cold mill was awarded. Since then MINO has supplied Profilglass with two slab scalpers, two hot rolling mills, four cold rolling mills, a continuous annealing and heat treatment line for automotive applications, and a complete tension leveling, cleaning, and passivation line.