Tomio Yamakawa

Advancements in Cone-type Rotary Piercing Technology

A cone-type piercing mill was developed by the authors for materials with poor hot workability. This piercing mill is called “the super piercer” in Europe. It has a pair of cone-type main rolls supported at both ends with their roll axes inclined and crossed so as to enable piercing at high feed and cross angles. In order to ensure the best performance of the rotary piercing, disc rolls are adopted instead of plate guide shoes. The super piercer was put into practice at the small-diameter seamless tube plant operated in 1983. The recent progress in our research and development on the super piercer has resulted in the concept of “the new super piercer,” which allows expansion piercing. Namely, the development of the skewing technology for disc roll axes and its application to the cone-type piercing technology has realized remarkable increase in the expansion ratio. The new super piercer was adopted as the core technology of the new medium-diameter seamless tube plant operated in 1997. In this paper, studied in detail were the influences of the expansion ratio, feed and cross angles on the rotary forging effects, redundant shear deformations and power consumption.