The first step in manufacturing Cold Rolled Sheet Products involves cold reducing coils of hot-rolled, pickled product to a thinner thickness. The primary feature of cold reduction is to reduce the thickness of hot-rolled coils into thinner thicknesses that are not generally attainable in the hot rolled state. The cold reduction operation induces very high strains (work hardening) into the sheet; thus, the sheet not only becomes thinner, but also becomes much harder, less ductile, and very difficult to form. However, after the cold-reduced product is annealed (heated to high temperatures), it becomes very soft and formable. In fact, the combination of cold reduction and annealing lead to a refinement of the steel that provides very desirable and unique forming properties for subsequent use by the customer.

The hot-rolled, pickled coils incoming to the cold reduction mill are of excellent quality attributes. The pickling operation is well-controlled to assure that all the oxides formed during hot rolling are removed. The thickness of the hot-rolled strip is important in that the properties of the final cold rolled and annealed product is influenced by the percent of cold reduction. This means that the thickness of each hot-rolled coil is carefully controlled to provide the mill with a specific thickness to achieve the proper percent cold reduction. Among other things, the percent of cold reduction affects the forming behavior of the product after annealing.

The production of a specific thickness of cold rolled sheet to meet an end user’s requirements involves sophisticated processing. Steel chemistry, hot strip mill processing variables, pickling practices, cold-rolling mill practices, annealing practices, and finally temper rolling practices all have a role in achieving the manufacture of top quality cold-rolled sheet products. This product is manufactured for a large number of applications that require a variety of properties from fairly simple to very sophisticated. The product is typically available of a thickness as low as 0.10 mm to 5.00 mm.

*Note: For half hard & full hard, material can be produced as per customer specifications.

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