Mechanical drives

Whether you operate BOF or AOD converters, our tilt drives provide the reliability you want and need. It's the job of tilt drives to turn the converter vessel in a controlled manner into the filling, emptying, and sampling positions. We have developed special solutions both for BOF and AOD converters.

All our tilt drive units are manufactured and fully assembled in our workshop in Hilchenbach, Germany. Once your unit arrives on site, we only need to shrink-fit the main gear onto the converter trunnion. So it's a time-saving, much faster assembly than with the old tangential keyed joint method.

You can rely on high-performance gears in SMS group design because they give you built-to-last durability due to our special case-hardening process. All our gears feature self-aligning roller bearings from premium suppliers. Also included is centralized oil lubrication of the gear teeth and bearings plus separate oil flow monitoring for every lubrication point.

As a result of systematic developments in materials, geometry, and the tribo-system, SMS giant torque spindles can transmit torques up to 40% higher than conventional slipper-type spindles. That means they out-perform even high-end cardan shafts. Moreover, SMS giant torque spindles are safe to operate without expensive safety clutches.

Traditionally, slipper-type spindles are used to transmit the drive torque to the work rolls. It's due to their simple and sturdy design that they easily absorb overloads and shocks in the elastic range. That gives them an extremely long service life.

Our SIEFLEX^®-HT gear-type spindles are engineered to transmit drive torque to the finishing mill work rolls. Involved here are a new hardening process, an optimized tooth design, and a special tribo-system, which enormously enhance the performance of these shafts. As a result, SIEFLEX^®-HT spindles pack up to double the torque of conventional gear-type drive shafts.

To facilitate work roll shifting, SIEFLEX^®-HT spindles include longer internal toothings of the sleeves on the mill pinion side. They achieve shifting distances of more than +/- 200 mm and deflection angles of up to 3°.

Equally effective is the continuous oil lubrication system included in SIEFLEX^®-HT spindles. It thoroughly cools the spindles during operation. Plus, due to the constant oil flow, there is no need to maintain grease levels and deal with environmentally polluting grease. All this significantly extends spindle service life and reduces mill downtimes.

Whatever it takes to engineer hot rolling mills and heavy plate mills, SMS group can draw on a wealth of experience. This is crucial for reliable and fatigue-resistant design.

That's because gear units for shears must withstand extremely high shock loads as they transmit their full torque during the brief cutting process. It's astonishing that just a few gear teeth bear this enormous load.

Characteristic of cold rolling mills is their operation over an extremely large range of speeds reaching up to 2,000 m/min. That's why the main drive units often comprise change-speed gears with two transmission stages. This provides a correspondingly wide speed range. The spur gears and mill pinion gears are arranged in one housing.

Always dedicated to top quality, we manufacture our drive components at our workshop in Hilchenbach, Germany. The forgings for the drive components come exclusively from select suppliers in Western Europe.

To guarantee the best mechanical properties, the degrees of deformation and the cleanness of the material must meet the most stringent requirements.

Unlike other gear manufacturers, SMS group calculates and improves tooth and flank profiles individually. That ensures equal pressure distribution over the entire load flank. As a result, the maximum contact pressure is approximately 30% lower than that of standard teeth.

Most gears in the metallurgical industry run with quenched and tempered output gears. However, gears made from this type of steel come with a significantly lower wear resistance than the much harder case-hardened variety. This is where SMS group's fatigue-resistant output gears make all the difference. Why? Because they are the most reliable solution for high-performance work roll drives.

What's so special about the SMS group case-hardening process for large gear wheels is that it boosts the torque capacity of new as well as existing gearboxes.

There is a tendency in cold mills for vibrations caused by higher strip speeds to leave periodic marks on the strip surface. Specially engineered to fix this problem, SMS group gears prevent these vibrations. Most significant here are the fine-tuned tooth face contact ratio and tooth transverse contact ratio as well as the gear mesh frequency.