China’s Ma Steel recently installed Kadant’s VeriLite roll cleaning system to raise quality of galvanized sheets. Imperfections, commonly found in panels for household appliances, have been significantly reduced.
High surface quality has always been a central focus at Ma Steel’s plant in Ma’anshan, Anhui Province China. Continuous improvement for premium galvanised steel sheets is part of their culture. A first in China, their Kadant VeriLite roll cleaning assemblies are reducing imperfections because of improved cleanliness, it is claimed. Maintenance downtime is also reduced because the VeriLite doctor blades can be changed rapidly unlike conventional roll scraping systems.
Ma Steel’s applications engineer, Huidong Huang, commented: “We make world class steel for household appliances. The smoothness of our galvanised sheets is important to prevent imperfections in the finished products. We decided to trial a new roll cleaning system from Kadant, and it immediately raised quality. Maintenance time was reduced and safety improved, too.”
Ma Steel has installed 12 VeriLite roll cleaning assemblies at stretch roll cleaning stations and has plans for more. Huidong Huang comments that over the first several months of a roll cleaning trial there was almost zero accumulation of contaminants on rolls and the steel web.
“Defects like pits, dents and blemishes, were minimised,” continues Huidong Huang. “In the past our production people had to stop the process to clean many times each day. Now we can run for long periods of time and then make blade changes in about 30 minutes. We are consistently producing greater output of higher quality grades.
“Surface finishes are always important for our customers. That’s why keeping rolls clean is essential to our success. When we reduce imperfections, our customers are more successful, and so are we at Ma Steel," concluded Huang.
More VeriLite roll cleaning assemblies will be added before the year-end to achieve even higher quality output.