Kloeckner Metals built a new coil processing facility in Calvert, Alabama to handle a variety of materials, including advanced high-strength steel. They installed a slitting line from Braner that can process materials from 0.010 to 0.250 inches thick at speeds up to 1,000 feet per minute. The line includes features like a cluster leveler, tensioners for different materials, and a surface inspection system to detect small defects at high speeds. It also has a packaging line to rapidly bundle and prepare finished coils for shipping. Kloeckner Metals was pleased with how the line from Braner met their needs for throughput, material handling, and productivity.

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2. “We looked at a number of different
sources for the slitter for Calvert,” says Russ
Delaney, president of Kloeckner Metals’
Flat Rolled Group. “After looking at sev-
eral options, both domestically and off
shore, we decided that Braner offered us
the best fit and value based on what we
were looking to do and for the advanced
high-strength steel applications we were
particularly designing this slitter to handle.”
The company built its 100,000-square
foot-facility beginning in mid-2012 on-site
with a new ThyssenKrupp mill, which pro-
duces carbon steel, and an Outokumpu mill
producing stainless steel. Kloeckner Metals
installed and commissioned its new slitter in
July and August and the facility was fully op-
erational by the official opening on Sept. 1.
Regional service
The company now has 18 flat roll pro-
cessing plants in key markets, including a
facility in Monterrey, Mexico. “Freight is a
large portion of costs, both inbound and
outbound,” Delaney says. “And service lev-
els required by our customers require us to
be within a few hundred miles of them.”
Being right on-site in Calvert means in-
bound logistics expenses are about as low
as they can be. “And we feel the Calvert
location, just 30 miles north of Mobile,
Ala., is well-positioned to cover the south-
ern section of the U.S., where a lot of the
growth is going on now and forecast to be
in the future,” Delaney says.
The Calvert plant processes a variety of
coils such as cold rolled and hot rolled pick-
led and oiled steel; coated products, which
include galvanized, galvanneal, aluminized
and prepainted materials; and stainless
steel. “We buy coils from the mill, as we do
at all our other locations,” Delaney says.
“We process them either into slit coils or
into cut-to-length sheets or blanks, and in
some cases we provide first- and second-
stage fabrication to those products to
provide our customers with just-in-time de-
livery in the most efficient form possible.”
The slitting line can run material from
0.010 inches to 0.250 inches thick and up
to 74 inches wide. “We can handle 40-ton
incoming coils, which matches the mill’s
BY THOMAS L. KLEMENS, P.E.
W
ith every opportunity comes a challenge. When
Roswell, Ga.-based Kloeckner Metals Corp.
decided in 2011 to build a new coil processing
facility in Calvert, Ala., one of the challenges it faced was
finding an equipment line that would handle a variety of
product including advanced high-strength steel.
High-speed
SLITTING
Coil processing line handles range of materials
including advanced high-strength steel
Modern Metals®
December 2013
A larger than normal slitter handles advanced high-
strength steel. Its hydraulic tool lockup feature
provides consistency among operators and jobs.
coilprocessing

3. capability as far as coil sizes go,” Delaney
says. “And we can produce 84-inch OD
slit coil, which is larger than most slitters
that are currently installed can provide.”
Customers appreciate the larger coils be-
cause they reduce the scrap generated by
each start and stop.
Heavy duty equipment
In addition to its large capacity, the slitter is
designed to run advanced high-strength
steels up to 260 ksi tensile strength. Pre-
dominantly used in the automotive industry
at this time, these materials are becoming
more popular in other industries trying to
achieve more strength with less weight.
“It’s really a high-strength line,” says
Chuck Damore, president of Braner USA,
Schiller Park, Ill. “We see trends in the in-
dustry going that way. Many of the newer
slitters we’re producing today can run this
ultra high-strength material.” To be able to
do that, he says, means building big ma-
chines with big arbors, lots of rigidity and
plenty of horsepower.
But because the Braner slitting line is
presently Kloeckner Metals’ only equip-
ment at the Calvert facility, it’s also
important for the line to be able to han-
dle a wide range of products for various
applications. For example, Damore says,
this line has the ability to run thin gauge
material into a pre-slit loop with a com-
bination drag generator/uncoiler loop
drive. “The advantage of that is it pro-
vides much better tension control than a
traditional pneumatic brake-type un-
coiler,” he says. “That means they’re
slitting the material tension-free, and that
provides improved width tolerances and
strip edge quality.”
The slitter itself also is much bigger than
on a traditional line. Additionally it has a
hydraulic tool lockup feature to provide
clamping consistency from operator to op-
erator and from one job to another.
“We’ve also developed an Andiamo
threading system that allows you to run a
short tab into the slitter, then start the slit-
ting process maybe 6 inches back,”
Damore says. “Then you’re threading a
single piece of material across the line,
rather than 15 cuts, for example. You
thread that single piece up to the exit end
of the line, then cut it off.” It’s not hard to
imagine how simplifying the threading
process improves machine productivity,
which was one of Kloeckner’s key criteria.
Equipping the line with a two-position
turret recoiler was a further boost to pro-
ductivity. “With that, you can do all of
your banding and coil preparation offline
while you’re winding a master coil in the
line,” Damore says. “So the line is never
down to put outside diameter bands
around the finished coils. Having a turret
recoiler will improve slitter uptime by as
much as 50 percent.”
Full speed ahead
With such productivity-enhancing features
at the beginning and end of the line, slitter
throughput capacity becomes a critical
consideration. This particular installation
can run at 1,000 feet per minute, but be-
cause appearance is an important factor
on much of the material being processed,
Kloeckner Metals installed a Cognex sur-
face inspection system on the line. “It is
basically a photographic system that can
see defects down to 1
⁄10,000 of an inch on both
the top and bottom surface,” Delaney says.
Although Cognex has installed this type of
equipment in numerous mills, this is the
first such installation in the service center
industry. “It will really allow us to be able
to run this equipment at high speed and
still be able to detect defects that are actu-
ally smaller than what a human eye would
see,” he says.
Because the company anticipates run-
ning a wide range of products on this line,
it has been outfitted with a range of ten-
December 2013 Modern Metals®
Kloeckner Metals’ Braner slitting
line accepts coils as large as 84
inches in diameter and can
operate at 1,000 feet per minute.

4. sioners as well. “Multiple tensioning de-
vices allow them to run both a wide
thickness range and a range of products,”
Damore says. “There is a tension device
for oiled material, critical surface, and a
different tension device for dry material,
critical surface. Those are roll tensioning
devices. And there’s a pad tensioner for
non-critical surface material.”
“We also have the capability to re-oil coils
on this slitter,” Delaney says. “Some end
users require special oils on their material,
so that’s another advantage of this line that
you don’t often find on slitters.”
As if that weren’t enough, the line in-
cludes Braner’s patented inline cluster
leveler that corrects problems in the in-
coming coil. “If the material has a wavy
edge or center buckle, the inline leveling
capabilities on this line can shape correct
it while they’re running at speeds up to
1,000 feet a minute,” Damore says. “It’s a
huge advantage because it allows them to
enhance the value of the strip.”
With all the features on the slitting line
designed to optimize throughput, it be-
comes important to process the finished
product rapidly as well. Braner supplied a
packaging line designed to keep up with
the high production rates. “Once coils
come off the slitter, they go onto a turnstile
to stage the coils downstream,” Damore
says. “Then we have an automated pack-
aging line that takes coils automatically
through a traversing downender. As the
downender lifts each coil off the turnstile,
it rotates the coil 90 degrees and sets it on
a conveyor. From there it goes down-
stream through a strapping station where
bands are applied around the coil.” A tur-
ret stacker places the banded coils on skids
where they are weighed and covered with
stretch-wrap for shipping.
Although Kloeckner Metals began with
one shift at the Calvert plant, it anticipates
growth opportunities down the road.
“We’re on property where we can expand
up to 400,000 square feet,” says Delaney,
“and we do have rail there. So we are in-
tending to grow this business, initially with
the Braner slitter that we put in, and then
as our customers have other demands for
other processes.”
Meanwhile, the operation is off to a
good start. “Braner delivered the equip-
ment on time, it was installed on time and
was commissioned with minimal startup
issues. We are very happy with its per-
formance.” I
Modern Metals®
December 2013
coilprocessing
Braner USA Inc., Schiller Park, Ill.,
847/671-6210, fax: 847/671-0537,
www.braner.com.
Kloeckner Metals Corp.,
Roswell, Ga., 678/259-8800,
www.kloecknermetals.com.
After a traversing downender
places the coils on a conveyor,
they move through a strapping
station to a turret stacker.
Reprinted from Modern Metals®
December 2013 • Copyright Trend Publishing Inc.