Phase 1: Stacker Upgrade at Nucor Utah

By replacing obsolete legacy equipment with modern rolling mill control equipment and methods and standardizing the network protocols, the Nucor Steel mill in Utah experienced improvements in maintenance, troubleshooting, control stability and functionality. Ultimately the upgrade, in conjunction with other process improvements, helped increase mill production and product quality. For example, the cold shear area increased from 220 fpm to 310 fpm without increasing wear on the cold shear brake and clutch.

One of the main advantages to doing a multi-phase upgrade is to size the control equipment in phase 1, taking into account the future capacity required when upgrading the rest of the plant equipment in phase 3. When the time comes to implement the successive phases, the switchover time is much faster.

In each phase, Russula re-utilized many existing components from the mill and replaced the obsolete components, which reduced the overall project cost and downtime. This approach is especially beneficial for steel plants with a mix of electrical and automation systems from different suppliers such as Nucor Utah. Hardward standards for the AC and DC drives, remote I/O, network protocol, controller platform, HMI and data acquisition system were selected at the beginning of the project and maintained throughout the subsequent phases.