bauma 2019
April 8 - 14, 2019 in Munich
For all those not willing to wait: Here you can already find interesting information about our heavy plate portfolio: The focus of this year's trade fair is on our versatile XAR® family with hardnesses from 300 to 600 HB. We have further improved the processability of the wear-resistant steels. Today, for example, they can be bent better thanks to optimized steel composition. We have also optimized the cutting and welding properties of some of the XAR® grades and increased their toughness, thus protecting them even better against impact loads. The lifespan of the structural components is thus extended.
In Munich, we will also be presenting our NA-XTRA®/XABO® high-strength fine-grain structural steels for economical lightweight construction with high load capacity and our perform® high-strength cold-forming steels that optimally combine strength and formability.
We are constantly developing our heavy plates for you so that we can offer you exactly what you need for your work. We are at your service - be it with the production of premium steel grades, the research and development of new, complex high-tech materials or with our extensive expertise. We listen, advise and develop for you, relying on intensive cooperation and close interaction. We (together) make (almost) everything possible.
All this and much more awaits you at the bauma in Munich. Here, we also present our comprehensive range of services: from resilience tests in our wear laboratory to innovative developments by our research department and support in processing issues through our application technology. Stop by, we are at your service: Munich Exhibition Centre, Hall A6, Booth 448.
We are looking forward to your visit!
Wear-resistant XAR steel in bucket wheel
Bucket wheel excavators don’t only look massive. What they achieve on a daily basis is more than impressive – and using wear-resistant steel really contributes to their performance.
Steel grades
Bigger, higher, further … our heavy plate steels are always employed when there’s a lot to be moved. Among them: XAR® – particularly wear-resistant; perform® – sturdy yet easily deformable; N-A-XTRA®/XABO® – high-strength and very even.
,,We see bauma as a driver of innovation - nowhere else are so many new ideas presented."
Sales manager of the Heavy Plate Business Unit
Once again, the Heavy Plate business unit of thyssenkrupp Steel will be present at bauma this year. For Head of Sales, Mario Klatt, it is an absolute must. “Every three years the international construction machinery industry meets and presents its latest developments. For us it is a good opportunity to meet up with our customers from all over the world. We appreciate this personal interaction and can ask them directly about their requirements from our products and learn about new opportunities in the market and challenges for the future. Only this way can we reliably identify trends, so we can offer products which will be attractive to our customers in the future, too.
"Our heavy plate is used in dump trucks to carry 400metric tons of weight and in cranes to extend telescopic arms 100 meters."
CEO Business Unit Heavy Plate
Heavy plate means heavy duty applications. Come visit us at the bauma in Munich from 8-14 April and see for yourself. thyssenkrupp Steel will be there. Today we caught up with CEO Volker Senger to speak about the trade fair:
“We will be exhibiting our entire portfolio and presenting our services. We are always there to help out our customers, whether their applications involve forming specific plates or finding the best way to manufacture entire component groups from heavy plate. Come speak to us!”
Interview
Volker Senger, CEO of thyssenkrupp Steel’s Heavy Plate business unit, on the material portfolio and the service portfolio for heavy plate customers.
Mr. Senger, heavy plate could actually also be called huge plate, since the plates made in your Business Area are not intended for small-scale projects, it’s fair to say?
That’s right, if we’re talking about heavy plate, then it’s always something big. We’re talking here about cruise ships and liquified gas tankers, about storage terminals and wind turbines, about bucket wheel excavators, pipelines, tunnel boring machines, and mobile cranes that extend their telescopic arms up to 100 meters, not to mention dump trucks that can carry loads of up to 400 metric tons.
What does heavy plate need to do?
Our material must be especially tough and must not rupture or break. Some materials have to be extremely resistant to abrasion, others to sour gases, but they always have to remain formable at the same time. Heavy plate is generally thicker than strip and can be rolled much wider. When being rolled in what is known as a four-high reversing stand, the heavy-plate slabs can be rotated, as well as passed back and forth. This is the best way to alter the structure of the plate.
Which materials rival heavy plate?
There are now hot-strip and wide-strip qualities that come very close to the mechanical properties of special heavy-plate steels. We’re talking about high-strength grades with yield strengths of well over 1,000 MPa. It takes great skill to roll these sorts of materials in the hot strip mill because you need to use a special cooling strategy.
That is precisely what you have achieved with the perform® range, is it not?
Correct. We currently offer hot-rolled, high-strength grades with yield strengths of 900 and 960 MPa in the perform® range. They are perfectly suited for use in the construction of mobile and on-board cranes or in the chassis of transport vehicles. Other perform® grades with yield strengths exceeding 1,000 MPa are in development and will most likely be ready for series production this year.
Always on hand, be it questions on materials or how to use them
thyssenkrupp Steel’s Heavy Plate business unit also offers other services alongside these materials. What are they?
Our technical customer support is always on hand to work together with customers to figure out where there is room for improvement. We help with questions about forming certain plates or about optimally manufacturing entire component groups from heavy plate. We have a welding laboratory in which we can inspect the properties of finished components once the customer has processed them. We also have a wear-and-tear laboratory in which we can test the abrasion resistance of our steels, depending on where the steel is intended to be used.
What about special requests?
In special cases, we also work with our customers on brand new materials that are to be developed for special uses. However, this only happens if the customer is 100 percent certain about it and wants to refine their own portfolio.
The Heavy Plate business unit also offers a new online service, doesn’t it?
Yes, here we have two online tools – ProWeld and ProWear – that help our customers choose the perfect steel for them. ProWear calculates the amount of wear and tear on a material depending on how it used, and ProWeld provides information on the welding behavior of our heavy-plate steels
Wear-resistant and high-strength: the range of materials for every occasion
What is so special about XAR®?
XAR® is our wear-resistant steel that is used anywhere the material is subject to enormous amounts of resistance, often in combination with high ductility. This is primarily the case in raw material extraction, recycling plants, and mining. Excavator shovels, dump trucks, shredding and crushing plants, ore, and stone filters have to withstand extreme circumstances, for example, when carrying tons of rock and then unloading it from a great height. Standard steel would wear out much too quickly in this situation. We can significantly increase the service life of parts and components with our wear-resistance XAR® grades, substantially shortening repair and maintenance intervals, thus making an important contribution to the economic operation of this type of system.
What about your xabo® and N-A-XTRA® grades?
They are both high-strength steels in the quarto range that have different yield strengths. N-A-XTRA® refers to plates up to 700 MPa, while xabo® was introduced as a trade mark name for grades higher than 700 MPa up to 1,300 MPa. In the long term, we want to offer all high-strength quarto sheets under the xabo® name. These grades withstand extraordinarily high loads and are used in crane construction or for longitudinal and cross beams of large trucks.
Apart from their high yield strength, what else makes the hot-rolled perform® plates stand out?\
They are incredibly good for cold forming. This property is especially important in combination with high levels of strength. This allows us to make a significant contribution to lightweight construction, and the lower fuel consumption helps to reduce CO2 emissions from the heavy-duty fleets. In comparison to traditional quarto plates, reduced thickness tolerances can continue to be guaranteed and an improved surface can be achieved, which leads to a significantly better paint finish quality.
There is another addition at Heavy Plate alongside the new perform®grades 900 and 960 MPa, right?
Yes, we have a new location in Belgium, where the acquisition of a so-called hot strip cut-to-length plant means we can now roll high-strength and ultra-high-strength strips – up to a strength of 1,300 MPa, in fact. It is an extremely challenging undertaking, and in Europe there are very few plants that can do that. This means our manufacturing site in Antwerp will play a key role when it comes to the production of the high-strength strips in the perform® family and the wear-resistant XAR® family, which feature excellent flatness and absence from stress. We are ideally positioned to meet the future demands of our customers with attractive products.
