The Hot rolling process of titanium plate, with its excellent mechanical properties, corrosion resistance, and low density, has shown broad application prospects in aerospace, chemical equipment, medical equipment, marine engineering, and other fields. Their unique properties play an irreplaceable role in many industries. It is worth mentioning that the oxide film on the surface of the titanium plate is like a natural and durable separator. The use of titanium seed plates can save separators, make it easier to peel the plates, and also eliminate the process of pre-treatment of seed plates, which further broadens the application range of titanium plates.
So, how to produce a suitable titanium plate? This is the core content we are going to discuss today. First of all, titanium plate is a general term, covering hot-rolled plates, cold-rolled plates, titanium coils, titanium strips, titanium foils, and other types. Today, we mainly focus on the production process of titanium hot-rolled plates.
The production Hot rolling process of titanium plate is mainly divided into two key links: slab production and titanium plate rolling.
In the slab production stage, titanium plates, like other titanium products, are originally derived from titanium ingots. However, giant titanium ingots are used here, weighing more than 6-10 tons. Titanium ingots need to go through a forging process to form titanium billets with a size of 21011008000mm. After the billet is made, the black oxide layer on the surface needs to be removed. This process generally uses a large gantry milling machine to mill the oxide scale on all four sides of the slab.
After understanding the production of slabs, let's first clarify what hot rolling is. The Hot rolling process of titanium plate refers to rolling above the recrystallization temperature of titanium billets. For ease of understanding, we can imagine the common noodle presses in northern homes, and imagine titanium plates as noodles, which are pressed and rolled multiple times. Of course, the basic principle of the actual production of titanium plates is similar to this, but the process is more complicated and precise.
Titanium plate rolling is mainly divided into four major processes: heating, rough rolling, finishing rolling, cooling, and surface treatment.
In the heating stage, the titanium slab is placed in a suitable temperature environment. The suitable heating temperature range of titanium plates is 900℃～1000℃. The heating and holding time is generally required to reach more than 4-4.5 hours to ensure that the titanium slab reaches the ideal rolling state.
In the rough rolling stage, the heated titanium billet is descaled by high-pressure water to remove the surface oxide scale, and then enters the rough rolling mill for preliminary forming. Rough rolling usually adopts a reversible rolling method, such as a two-roller or four-roller mill, and the billet is rolled to the intermediate thickness through multiple passes. This stage may also include widening rolling or shaping rolling to adjust the width and shape to prepare for subsequent finishing rolling.
In the finishing rolling stage, the intermediate billet is cut and then enters a multi-stand finishing mill, such as a 7-stand four-roller mill. Finishing rolling uses high-speed rolling and precise reduction control to roll the material to the final thickness, and uses plate shape closed-loop control technology to ensure dimensional accuracy and ensure that the quality of the titanium plate meets the standard.
In the cooling and coiling stage, the titanium coil, after finishing rolling, is quickly cooled to the coiling temperature through a laminar cooling system, and then coiled by a coiler. The cooling process needs to be dynamically adjusted according to different grades of titanium materials and final rolling temperature to optimize material properties. The final product may also need to be bundled, marked, and undergo other subsequent processing for storage and transportation.
The hot rolling process has the following significant characteristics:
1. Energy consumption advantage: During the hot rolling process, the Hot rolling process of titanium plate has good plastic processing, low deformation resistance, unobvious work hardening, and is easy to roll, thereby reducing the energy consumption required for metal deformation and reducing production costs.
2. High production efficiency: Hot rolling usually uses large ingots and large reduction rolling, with a fast production rhythm and large output, which creates favorable conditions for large-scale production and meets the market's large demand for titanium plates.
3. Optimization of organizational properties: The cast structure is transformed into a processed structure through hot rolling, which greatly improves the plasticity of the material. At the same time, the titanium alloy structure is refined and the performance is optimized through precise temperature control (850-950℃) and multiple rolling passes, which improves the comprehensive performance of the titanium plate.
4. Anisotropy of performance: The characteristics of the rolling method determine that the performance of the rolled plate is anisotropic, that is, the material has obvious performance differences in the longitudinal, transverse and high directions, and there are deformation textures and recrystallization textures, and there is obvious directionality in the punching performance. This feature needs to be considered when applying to give full play to the performance advantages of titanium plates.
As the core technology of high-end metal material processing, the hot rolling process of titanium plates has broken through the industry bottlenecks, such as the traditional rolling force fluctuation of ±5% and the plate shape tolerance of ±0.1mm. However, in the face of the demand for higher strength-to-toughness ratios of alloys such as TA15 and TC4 in the aerospace field, continuous innovation is still needed to promote the further development of the hot rolling process of titanium plates.
Tel: +86-29-89506568
WA/Mob: +86-17778976690
Email: linhui@lhtitanium.com
