Rourkela, Feb 5: With the initiative taken up by the employees of the Electrical Resistant Welded Pipe Plant (ERWPP) of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) and the support rendered by the upstream units, the Steel Plant has produced ERW pipes with 11 mm thickness for the first time.
It is worth mentioning here that since inception the ERW Pipe Plant had produced pipes with maximum thickness up to 10mm. However keeping in view the tough competition in the pipe segment, the Unit collective made all out efforts to bag an order from RINL, Vizag for pipes with 11mm thickness and complete it successfully.
In the process of producing the pipes with 11 mm thickness and 14 inch outer diameter the unit collective had to face a lot of technical challenges because of the limitations of the Mill, which they overcame with innovative initiatives.
Suitable fine tuning of chemical composition was carried out at Steel Melting Shop-II with the help of the R & C Lab in order to increase the yield and tensile strength of the HR coil. Thereafter, at Hot Strip Mill, under strict monitoring and control, coil with strictly prescribed variations were rolled out to take care of additional expansion of the strip in the mill during pipe forming.
Pipes with total length of 6 kilometres weighing about 561 tonnes and fulfilling all other specifications have been despatched to RINL in the month of January 2016. The pipes will be used for ash and slurry transportation.
Motivated with this successful venture the ERW Pipe Plant collective is now gearing up to further expand the mill’s product range and make utmost contribution to boost the bottom line of the Steel Plant.
