| The whole Outokumpu group employs more than 19,000 people in over 40 countries and supplies copper products, stainless steel and related technologies for various industries. UPCAST� is a continuous casting system for producing high-quality copper and copper alloy wire rods and is the market leader in small-to-medium size units. Over 140 UPCAST units have been installed worldwide since the introduction of the system in 1971. The latest addition of UPCAST plants in the CIS market area was in 2002, when Odeskable in Ukraine installed a 12,000 TPA UPCAST unit.
UPCAST is an easy-to-operate system for producing copper rod from cathodes. The capacities range from 2,000 to 30,000 TPA and cast rod diameter is typically 8mm. When a capacity is up to 7,500 TPA, the plant is supplied as a single-furnace system (=combined melting/holding furnace). For capacities over that, a separate melting furnace is required. The system is always tailor-made to meet the customers needs with regard to lay-out, level of automation, product mix (copper and/or alloys, rod diameters, etc.) and Outokumpu supplies a comprehensive package of operational training along with each UPCAST delivery, including a training period in Finland and a number of specialist services after the start-up of the plant.
Recent developments in the UPCAST technology are set to be in line with the latest trends in the wire and cable industry. For example, the 8mm rod used as feed material in multiwire drawing processes needs to be of very high quality, otherwise wire breakages may decrease the overall productivity of the drawing plant. To meet this demand, Outokumpu has modified the computer-controlled servo drive system operating the casting machine and redesigned the section controlling the solidification. These improvements have been tested at a number of existing UPCAST customers, and have proven to significantly increase the rod quality, namely drawability. All new plants are now equipped with these developments. Also, considerable amount of attention has been paid to further developing the small-capacity (up to 7,500 TPA) units. These units include now e.g. full automation of the raw material charging system.
Flexibility has always been a strong point of UPCAST systems. A single-furnace system can be designed so that future expansion to a larger capacity is possible, and also the producer can cast several rod sizes simultaneously, if so required.
The main contributor to production cost in the system is electricity. With the relatively low power cost in Russia, a typical production cost would be around 20-30 USD/ton of rod produced, and 1-2 operators per shift are needed, depending on the size and capacity of the plant.
|
