Basic Knowledge of Stainless Steel - Production Process Flow

Comprehensive Guide to Stainless Steel Production Process I. Smelting Process of Stainless Steel Crude Steel Currently, the world's stainless steel smelting processes are mainly divided into one-step, two-step, three-step methods, and a new integrated production method. One-step process: Hot metal + AOD (Argon Oxygen Decarburization Furnace) Two-step process: EAF (Electric Arc Furnace) + AOD (Argon Oxygen Decarburization Furnace) Three-step process: EAF (Electric Arc Furnace) + AOD (Argon Oxygen Decarburization Furnace) + VOD (Vacuum Oxygen Decarburization Furnace)

In addition to traditional production processes, many enterprises now adopt the integrated production process, which directly produces stainless steel from hot metal. The process is: RKEF (Rotary Kiln Electric Furnace) + AOD (Argon Oxygen Decarburization Furnace).

II. Hot Rolling Process of Stainless Steel coil The stainless steel hot rolling process uses slab (mainly continuous casting slab) as raw material, which is heated and then made into strip steel by rough rolling and finishing rolling units. The hot strip from the last finishing mill is cooled to the set temperature through laminar cooling and coiled into steel coils by the coiler. The cooled coils have oxide scale on the surface and appear black, commonly known as "stainless steel black skin coils". After annealing and pickling to remove the oxidized surface, they become "stainless steel white skin coils". Most hot rolled products circulating in the stainless steel market are stainless steel white skin coils. III. Cold Rolling Process of Stainless Steel coil After hot rolling, some stainless steel hot rolled products are directly used by downstream customers, while others need to be further processed into cold rolled products. Stainless steel cold rolling mostly uses hot rolled products with a thickness of 3.0-5.5mm, which are rolled by cold rolling equipment to produce stainless steel cold rolled products. Currently, there are two main production processes for stainless steel cold rolling: single-stand cold rolling and multi-stand cold rolling. After cold rolling, stainless steel coil needs to go through annealing and pickling units. The annealing of cold rolled stainless steel is to eliminate work hardening and achieve softening through recrystallization; the purposes of pickling are to remove the oxide layer formed on the strip surface during annealing and passivate the stainless steel surface to improve the corrosion resistance of the steel plate.

Baojia - Stainless Steel, specializing in processing cold-rolled stainless steel. Steel grade: 201, 304, 410, 430, 439, 409, 420.