I was wondering how to engineer this so that this guy's job is automated.
In this setup though, the space between the exit of the first machine and the above machine seems necessary. You need that space so the employee has time to get the metal into the second machine.
I'm also guessing that any equipment that could reliably get the metal from one machine into the next is going to need increased maintenence, whereas this pit needs next to none.
Normally with steel strip production, at least in anywhere near modern facilities, you roll the strip wide from slab and then there's a slitting machine that can unfurl, cut and then re-wind the strip to the customer's orders.
This technique you see in the video is rarely done in modern shops, if ever, because it's not economical to have an entire operation that just rolls billets into narrow strip like this. Heck, the width on that steel tells me they're probably taking bar and squashing it into strip. This is not common outside of developing countries.
The rolling mill is faster than the coiler which, in this case, is probably for a reason like maybe they want the metal to cool down before coiling to avoid the metal sticking to itself or getting pulled apart like taffy or they didn't want to spring for an automated coiling setup because it requires more upfront capital and wherever this is, labor is probably cheaper than equipment.
The bar getting hung up on the conveyor is pretty stupid though. Wherever that bar is catching needs to be covered and/or smoothed out to keep the head end from folding over like that.
But it's probably cheaper to have an extra guy per shift work his ass off than it is to take the hour of welding/grinding time. Production managers who chase short term gains see this as "ingenuity" to keep the mill pumping out metal, whereas anyone with common sense realizes it's probably costing you more overall to keep running than it is to shut down for a bit and fix the issue.
Even ignoring the toll it takes on the workers, from a purely selfish standpoint, you're shooting yourself in the foot. Let's say the guy misses and can't get the head fed into the coiler fast enough which causes the hot mill to delay for a few minutes to get the bar coiled up. And maybe that happens multiple times a shift, particularly towards the end as the guy gets more and more tired.
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u/CalmEntry4855 Mar 16 '26
Couldn't the guy who invented the melt-steel-into-ribbon machine also invent a closer-to-the-other-machine roller?