China Steel Corporation has operated a new reversing cold rollingmill for non grain-oriented silicon steels since the beginning of 2003.The mill stand features hydraulic roll gap setting, intermediate rollaxial shifting with CVC technology, work roll and intermediate rollbending systems and multizone cooling equipments. The industrialresults are reported in terms of thickness tolerances and flatness.

With increasing boron content, the coarsening rate of M23C6 carbidesbecomes reduced near grain boundaries in tempered martensitic 9Cr-3W-3Co-VNb steel during creep at 650 °C. This retards the recovery ofmartensitic microstructure up to long times and increases long-termcreep strength. However, excess addition of boron and nitrogen causesthe formation of large amount of massive boron-nitrides during normalizingat 1050-1150 °C, which significantly decreases the boronconcentration available for microstructure stabilization and degradesthe creep strength.

ThyssenKrupp's n° 8 hot dip galvanizing line is equipped with aChemcoater to apply passivating layers such as chromate orphosphate to the galvanized strip. Attention must be paid to the factthat the Chemcoater process can operate at variable speeds. Theinvestigations to achieve a constant thickness of the coated layerover width and length are reported.

Four hot rolled steel grades were produced by the thin slab castingwith direct rolling technology at Acciaieria Arvedi S.p.A. (Cremona)and were coiled at two different temperatures. The steels are featuredby different chemical compositions: one is low carbon Al killedand three are high strength low alloy (HSLA) characterized by thepresence of Nb, V. The aim of the study is to investigate the influenceof the different coiling temperature on the mechanical and formabilityproperties as a function of the different chemical compositionsin order to exploit the potential of the plant. The results about theinduced strain aging appear interesting and are presented in thispaper.

CST has supplied 1.5 million tons of tin plate slabs to the world marketsince 1997 for several final applications, including D&I, DrawCans, Double Reduction, Easy Open End. After CSTs hot strip millwas commissioned in September 2002, the Company has suppliedhot coils for the foreign market tin plate production since March2003. In partnership with its customers, CST defined criteria for slabapplication based on continuous casting quality events and continuouscasting parameters, and their relationship with the qualityresults on the final product.