TPT September 2008

197 / 204

195 September 2008 ›
Tumicon – mill management and control tool
for advanced stretch reducing blocks
Dr rer nat Stefan Willems, general manager technology and electrical, Kocks Technik GmbH & Co KG,
Mr Jörg von der Heiden, marketing manager, and Mr Jörg Surmund, area sales manager, Friedrich Kocks GmbH & Co KG
1. Introduction
With the introduction of the stretch reducing block (SRB) [1], a highly
flexible tool for finish rolling of tubes has been made available on
the market. Individually driven stands (and even rolls), quick roll
changing, adjustable stands and remote control enable the user to
handle production in a new way.
Mill output is increased due to a number of technological features
including short stand spacing for minimizing the heavy end losses,
dynamic drives that allow individual speed control for each stand
(eg for wall thickness control), and free-size rolling [2] to enable the
rolling of different dimensions without roll or stand change.
Even though previous stretch reducing mills (SRM) were equipped
with technological functions such as heavy end control (HEC) and
automatic wall thickness control (AWC) [3], their effect was limited
(eg to the abilities of the group drives [4]).
In order to handle all the new features, Kocks has developed an
integrated management and control system branded Tumicon,
which can be applied to all types of stretch reducing mills. However,
most of the management functions are dedicated to the new SRB.
This article describes the main functions of the Tumicon system.
2. The Tumicon family
The chart below (figure 1) shows the components of the Tumicon
system:
Mill manager
Program for the setup calculation, parameter changes, roll inventory,
stand management and pass design.
TecBox
High-speed control system (VME-Bus real time system) for the
speed control of the motors. This is the hardware for the techno-
logical functions of the Tumicon system such as HEC and AWC.
Inspect
HMI-system for the technological functions of the Tumicon system.
Used to change parameters and visualize the process.
Remote adjustment
Hardware of the remote adjustment system for the Kocks SRB. With
this system the three last rolling stands can be adjusted.
Remote adjustment program
Visualization for the remote control.
3. Tumicon mill manager
The Tumicon mill manager is a windows program, which can be
installed on standard PCs. The Backbone is an Oracle database,
where the configuration data and results are stored. The system is
a multi-user. The program is normally installed in the planning office
and in the roll shop. Additional installations can be in the main pulpit
and the quality control office.
The database should be installed on a separate
server. Each Tumicon PC requires an ethernet
connection to the database server.
3.1 Tumicon modules
The diagram (figure 2) shows the Tumicon modules
required for the setup calculation. The rolling
sequence is defined in the ‘products’ module.
Together with the rolls coming from the ‘roll inventory’
module, the motor speeds and remote control data
can be defined.
Other modules are used for administration and
configuration of the system.
The system handles different types of stands such
as rolling stands with different roll diameters and
dummy stands.
For an easy update of the pass design an import
function is available.
 Figure 1: Components of the Tumicon system