Horizontal continuous casting machines with two-sided strand withdrawal
摘要
The growing interest in small-scale steel production has made the development of horizontal continuous casting technology and equipment particularly important. Horizontal continuous casting machines (CCMs) offer significant technical and economic advantages for producing limited batches of high-quality billets and slabs from special steels and alloys. This paper analyzes the design and process features and the development prospects of horizontal CCMs with two-sided strand withdrawal. It summarizes the current state of development of such machines, their main design and technological characteristics, and the results of their laboratory and industrial operation, and discusses their potential use in modern specialized casting-and-rolling facilities for small-tonnage metallurgy. A key advantage of these machines is the ability to produce small batches of thin slabs and sheet bars economically in cases where the use of modern high-capacity CCMs is impossible or impractical.