Ma Steel Runs Cleaner with Kadant VeriLite™ Roll Cleaner Assembly
China’s Ma Steel recently installed a VeriLite roll cleaner assembly to raise the quality of its galvanized sheets. Imperfections, a common concern in panels for household appliances, have been significantly reduced.
As a leading producer of premium galvanized steel for household appliances, high surface quality has always been a central focus at Ma Steel’s plant in Ma’anshan, Anhui Province, China. Continuous improvement and product innovation is part of the plant’s culture. A first in China, the plant is using Kadant VeriLite roll cleaner assemblies to improve roll cleanliness and reduce sheet imperfections. Maintenance downtime is also reduced because the roll cleaning blades used with the VeriLite roll cleaning assembly can be changed rapidly unlike conventional roll scraping systems.
Says Ma Steel’s applications engineer Huang Huidong, “We make world-class steel for household appliances. The smoothness of our galvanized 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 our product quality. Maintenance time was reduced and operator safety improved too.”
Super clean leads to super quality
Ma Steel has installed 12 VeriLite roll cleaner assemblies at its bridle and tension roll stations, and the plant has plans for more. 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 minimized,” continues Huidong Huang. “When particles fell from the old scraper onto the web, our production people had to clean the rolls by hand. This could happen several times per day and was challenging to maintain. Now we can run for extended periods and make blade changes in only minutes to ensure high roll cleanliness. 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 to achieve even higher quality output.
