Capital Engineering & Research Incorporation Limited (hereinafter referred to as "CERI") continues to make breakthroughs and innovations in the field of high-end titanium alloy manufacturing. Aiming at the unique advantages of high strength, corrosion resistance, lightweight and biocompatibility of titanium alloy materials, as well as their wide application needs in high-end manufacturing fields such as aerospace, marine engineering, biomedicine, energy and chemical industry, it deeply integrates process innovation and equipment research and development to build an intelligent manufacturing system leading the industry.

Faced with the industry pain points of complex hot processing production process and high technical threshold of titanium alloy, CERI relies on more than 70 years of technological accumulation in the metallurgical field to systematically study the whole process of hot processing and innovatively build a three-in-one titanium alloy intelligent manufacturing system integrating "process-equipment-intelligent control". The system effectively overcomes the three major technical barriers in the field of titanium alloy material processing: "difficult to control temperature-sensitive characteristics, difficult to ensure microstructure uniformity, and difficult to meet dimensional accuracy consistency", promotes the leapfrog development of titanium alloy bar and wire rod production from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing, and sets a new benchmark for the industry's efficient and stable production and sustainable development.

Core Technology of Process

The hot rolling production process of titanium alloy bar and wire rods is complex, and there are significant technical challenges in rolling theory and temperature control.

Research on material properties: The plastic deformation mechanism of titanium alloy at high temperature is complex, and its flow stress is highly sensitive to temperature, strain rate and microstructure. In-depth research on the thermophysical parameters of titanium alloys and the thermal deformation characteristics and organizational evolution laws under different deformation parameters has been carried out, and a complex material model database for different titanium alloy grades has been established, providing theoretical basis and data support for rolling process design and equipment development.

Research on controlled rolling technology: The hot rolling temperature window of titanium alloy is narrow, and small fluctuations in hot working parameters can easily cause defects such as grain coarsening or surface cracks. Advanced temperature control methods are innovatively established for the production line to ensure that the entire hot processing range is within the material's processable temperature range, and ultimately obtain ideal internal organization and highly consistent material properties of the cleaning rod.

Key Technology of Equipment

In response to the high standards of titanium alloy production, CERI has developed a series of core equipment to ensure the stability of production, including transverse reversible blooming mill, sixth-generation short stress line rolling mill, hydraulic tie rod precision rolling mill, modular rolling mill, serialized rotary shear and wire rod crimper.

Transverse reversible blooming mill: With advanced design concepts and manufacturing processes, this equipment has become the core equipment in the field of titanium alloy processing. The transverse reversible blooming mill adopts the method of rolling line fixation and rolling mill transverse movement, which is particularly suitable for titanium alloy rolling. It adopts fully automatic flexible matching technology to realize multiple functions such as transverse movement, steel throwing, steel turning-over, centering and straight-line supply of rolled pieces, shorten the pass interval time, optimize speed control and prevent scratches.

The equipment has high load-bearing capacity and high stiffness, adopts hydraulic locking and encapsulated rolling guide design, and meets the requirements of GJB2218A2 level standard. The microstructure reaches level 2, and the dimension of equiaxed α is uniform, effectively improving product stability and reliability.

Sixth generation short stress line rolling mill: ZJD-VI sixth generation high stiffness short stress line rolling mill has excellent precision control capability, extremely small deformation during the load-bearing process, and the overall strain value is stably controlled below 0.2 μm/kN, which can effectively resist external force interference and ensure the stability of the rolling process and product quality. The equipment adopts a reverse-hanging encapsulated balance device, a double-sided spherical anti-play mechanism and a triple sealing system, which supports automatic adjustment of the roll gap and hole groove and overall quick replacement function. Its serialized models fully cover the field of steel sections, with a cumulative installed capacity of more than 4,000 units.

Hydraulic tie rod precision rolling mill: An advanced hydraulic tie rod system is equipped, which can accurately achieve zeroing of the housing spring and accurately apply pre-deflection load. During operation, the pressure on the rolls is dynamically and accurately distributed through independent pressure settings, thereby ensuring the balance of roll operation and the uniformity of pressure distribution between rolls. During the rolling process, mechanical adjustment and radial hydraulic preload work together to quickly and effectively compensate for rolling deformation, eliminate roll gap deviation in time, and ensure the stability of the rolling process. In addition, the equipment also integrates stiffness compensation function, which can make the finished product accuracy always reach 1/3DIN standard stably even under various complex working conditions.

The rolling mill is particularly suitable for rolling high-end difficult-to-process materials such as aviation-grade titanium alloys. It can meet the production needs of aerospace, medical and other fields with extremely high material precision requirements, and help related industries to manufacture high-performance and high-precision products.

Modular rolling mill: The high-stiffness eccentric sleeve and decoupling transmission box are adopted to effectively improve the rigidity and operation stability of the equipment and ensure the accuracy of power transmission. Through the optimized design of oil film bearings, friction losses are significantly reduced and equipment durability is further enhanced. Relying on its strong load-bearing capacity and compact small roll ring structure, it has successfully overcome the technical difficulties of rolling small-sized titanium alloys and achieved a single output of large panel weight materials of 227 kg. Its microstructure fully complies with the GJB2219A-2018 A1 level standard.

In the production process of aviation-grade titanium alloy products, modular rolling mills can achieve continuous production with high consistency and stability, providing reliable and high-quality material guarantees for high-precision fields such as aerospace, and effectively promoting the improvement of manufacturing levels in related industries.

Serialized shears: Covering more than 50 serialized shear products such as gantry shear, crank shear, rotary cropping shear, combined shear, transverse shear, continuous shear, etc., suitable for a variety of process scenarios and supporting full-process customization. The equipment adopts a high-load-bearing structure design with excellent impact resistance. It can be equipped with double speed ratios, double shear edges and servo systems.

The shearing specification range is Φ6~Φ185 mm, the speed adjustment range is wide, the accuracy is controlled within ≤3‰V, and the double length error is less than ±50 mm, which effectively ensures the consistency and accuracy of shearing.

Electrical intelligence: The full-process automatic intelligent control system for aviation-grade titanium alloy involves the rolling process of different titanium materials and the comprehensive process control of electromechanical and hydraulic integration. It innovatively integrates one-button rolling, automatic starting rolling at any pass and powerful adaptive simulation rolling, dynamically monitors steel temperature, speed and equipment status in real time from multiple directions, switches rolling modes autonomously and flexibly, and deeply adapts to the complex and changeable rolling processes of titanium alloys, making titanium rolling smarter.

Promotion and Application

CERI has profound technical accumulation and rich performance in the field of high alloys. It has successively completed high-alloy bar and wire rod projects such as Baosteel Special Steel, Dongbei Special Steel, TISCO, Yongxing Special Steel, Shenyuan Special Steel, and Yantai Walsin Stainless Steel.

In 2020, the bar and wire rod project of Tiancheng Titanium Industry was completed and put into production, successfully building the first fully automatic titanium alloy bar and wire rod intelligent production line in China, leading the technological progress of the titanium industry and setting an industry benchmark. In 2024, the bar and wire rod project of Western Superconducting Technologies Co., Ltd. achieved remarkable results, successfully rolling high-grade titanium alloy and high-temperature alloy bar and wire rod products, further consolidating CERI's technological leading position in this field.

CERI continues to deepen its development in the field of titanium alloy production and has won many awards such as the first prize of Metallurgical Science and Technology Progress Award, the first prize of Nonferrous Science and Technology Progress Award, the first prize of Minmetals Group Science and Technology Progress Award, and the first prize of China MCC Science and Technology Progress Award. These honors are not only engraved with the milestone of technological breakthroughs of CERI, but also transformed into the kinetic energy of the enterprise in the field of titanium alloy to continue to refine.