Nucor Steel Arkansas issued the Final Acceptance Certificate (FAC) for its F5 and F6 main drive upgrades from Primetals Technologies. This FAC marks the completion of the third phase of the total project to replace the hot strip mill’s six main mill stand drives in Armorel, Arkansas.
With additional complications due to the Covid pandemic, the main challenge in replacing the drives was to execute the replacement and upgrade in nine days, the maximum outage time allowed. The massive drives included identical take-over points for all existing, equally large cables to meet this tight timeline. The new Siemens Sinamics SL 150 drives also needed to start up immediately and achieve full production capacity without any ramp-up time. The team performed hot commissioning 15 hours ahead of schedule.
The goal of the upgrades was to replace existing equipment. However, after several tests, Nucor discovered that the modern drives improved operation, leading to improved strip quality. As North America’s most diversified steel and steel products company, Nucor produces 24 million tons per year. By upgrading its existing hot strip mill drives, Nucor Steel Arkansas will expand its production capacities in Armorel.
