A group of V.I.P.’s visiting the laboratory complex at The Southern Cross Company at Middelburg see the facilities at work for producing small test ingots of steel. They are made in a high-frequency induction furnace. The ingots are hot-rolled and finally cold-rolled on the experimental rolling mill shown above.
A Complete miniature steelworks has been installed in the laboratory of The Southern Cross Steel Company (Pty.) Limited at Middelburg, to test, under simulated production conditions, the raw materials that will be used in the manufacturer [sic] of South Africa’s first stainless steel on a commercial basis.
The plant-in-microcosm consists of a melting section, a rolling mill and a complete heat treatment installation and a pickling plant.
In the melting section there is a high-frequency induction furnace in which any grade of stainless steel can be produced, not synthetically, but using the actual production quality raw materials to test new alloys and the effects of varying quantities of the different alloying elements making up the many types of corrosion-resistant steels.
Two furnaces, operating at high and low temperatures, are used in the annealing section to study the best temperatures and methods of heat treatment under actual production conditions, and a miniature plant has also been installed to decide the best method of pickling the various types of corrosion-resistant steels to be produced during 1967 and subsequent years.
The experimental rolling mill equipment enables the Southern Cross engineers and metallurgists to evaluate completely the rollability of any metal in both the hot and cold state, thus simplifying production planning for the works mill. It is also capable of producing small quantities of experimental steels in rolled form for test purposes.
The installation comprises a motor, worm reducer, a 2-hi double helical pinion stand, a 2-hi mill and a 4-hi/3-hi/2-hi combination cold mill.
The rolling mills are of the “prestressed” type and are driven by split-sleeve, palm-and-claw type universal spindles. Lubrication is automatic throughout by means of systems devised by SUECO (Shibaura United Engineering Company of Japan) the firm which has supplied much of the equipment for the Southern Cross mill.
