SINGLE BELT CASTING - A PROMISING TECHNIQUE FOR THE PRODUCTION OF STEEL STRIP

The ongoing struggle to reduce the production costs in steelmaking is one of the important driving forces for R&D engineers. By combining ne w technical solutions from different areas with new ideas for steelmak ing, it is possible to find new cost effective processes for steel pro duction. During the last decade, great efforts have been made worldwid e to develop new techniques for near net shape casting of steel. Most of these projects have dealt with production of steel strip. This pape r describes the work carried out at MEFOS to develop the DSC (Direct S trip Casting) process. The process is based on the horizontal single b elt principle. Based upon the experience to date, we can conclude that belt casting is a technology suitable for high productivity demands, e.g., for mass production of low carbon steels.