Steelwork: Pusher furnace and conveying system

The pusher furnace is in use at the hot rolling mill in the Stahlwerk (steelworks) of Thyssen-Krupp in Duisburg. In the hot rolling mill the so-called hot rolling is carried out, a metalworking process in steel production: rolling at high temperatures makes possible a significant reduction in thickness. For example, crude steel billets are reshaped into hot-rolled strip (a hot-rolled product with a rectangular cross section and a width of at least 600 mm).
The pusher furnace heats billets of crude steel to rolling temperature. The billets are the rolling mills' basic material for the production of hot-rolled strip or heavy plate.
The billets are pushed through the furnace and heated up to 1250 °C, making them rollable, while sustaining their billet shape without melting, despite the high temperatures. The billets are registered by a computer-operated guidance system and conveyed into the furnaces. Every furnace is regularly loaded on the basis of a predetermined sequence. The rolling mill has a total of five pusher furnaces.
On the recording, the process can be heard in which a crude steel billet is collected. First, the furnace grid opens, and then the heated crude steel billet is withdrawn from the furnace and placed on a conveyor belt. After the billets are extracted from the pusher furnace they are conveyed to the next station, the descaler.


Sound recordist: Konrad Gutkowski / Marie-Claire Fink
Video recordist: Konrad Gutkowski / Marie-Claire Fink
Photographer: Konrad Gutkowski / Marie-Claire Fink