Flexible lubrication concept. The future of cold rolling lubrication

Abstract

For cold rolling systems, in particular for tandem mills that are the major form of the process, conventional lubrication processes appear to have reached their limits. This paper proposes a new advanced lubrication concept called flexible lubrication which adjusts the friction levels at the three process time scales: the rolling campaign, the local scale (coil to coil), and the transient stages within two coils. The proposed approach is expected to increase roll campaign length, energy saving, mill capacity, and flexibility of production programming while at the same time avoiding the detrimental effects created by uncontrolled friction variations such as sudden increases in rolling force and chattering. Showing the conventional lubrication limits through a deep production analysis, this paper is then concerned with the study of the flexible lubrication concept at the laboratory scale and finally, initial results obtained in the first industrial application of this procedure are also reported.