CAST AND ROLL®

Luvata has developed a new CAST AND ROLL® process suitable especially for small to medium scale production of high quality copper tubes.

In this process a hollow tube shell is produced by continuous casting and further deformed into a mother tube coil in a planetary rolling mill without any preheating. The mother tube is then drawn into finished dimensions by conventional cold drawing methods.

Because of fewer process stages and smaller equipment, the total investment is lower than with conventional processes: the economies of scale are brought down to meet local markets.

The production costs are reduced because of high degree of automation, high coil package weight and low energy consumption. Simple tooling and easy maintenance also cut running costs.

Hot working of the cast material during rolling results in a homogenized and small grain structure. Inert gas protects the tube from oxidation during hot working. Good concentricity is attained due to the cross-rotational rolling process.

All this enables a profitable world class quality copper tube production, including the most demanding thin wall ACR-tubes. Several commercial plants based on this technology are already in operation.