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Charlotte Stonestreet
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Reversing rougher powered
01 June 2015
Two of Europe’s largest synchronous motors, along with the highest power-rated medium voltage (MV) drives ever used in a reversing roughing mill, have been commissioned by ABB at Tata Steel’s Port Talbot hot strip mill in South Wales.

The reversing rougher is a heavy torque application and as such demands two ABB 12.5 megawatt (MW) salient pole synchronous motors, together with two ABB MV drives rated at 36 mega volt-amperes (MVA), 3.1 kilovolts (kV), to power the slab between a set of rolls.
"With the old system the average cycle time was 95 seconds. Today it is 80 seconds,” says Steve Winkley, Tata Steel’s project manager for the roughing mill project. "When we change direction of the bar, it’s much faster than ever before. When we take advantage of the motors maximum top speed, this will result in an average speed of work increase of 30 tonnes per hour more steel; that is a staggering 200,000 tonnes per year."
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- SynRM motor & VSD packages
- Enabling real-time collaboration
- Energy costs cut
- Powerful Savings
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- Plan to increase production output & cut energy bills
- High Speed, Low Vibration
- HIGHER TORQUE
- Fast Payback In High Power Applications
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- Production line upgrade
- Natural ventilation permits wider use of torque motors
- Permanent-magnet motor surpasses IE4 standard
- IE5 efficiency without rare earth magnets
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- Reliability issues solved