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48 Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2015
From the Americas
to 1.7 million tons by 2024, a Kobe senior officer,
Hiroshi Kato, told Bloomberg News in Tokyo in February.
That market would be bigger, and its pace of growth
faster, than in Japan – where demand is expected to
approximately double to 50,000 tons over the ten years.
The size of the American plant would depend on Kobe’s
need for capacity to process aluminium alloy, Mr Kato
said. A larger, integrated plant could only be justified by
a broader customer base, perhaps extending beyond
the auto industry.
Last year Kobe’s Dutch rival Constellium NV acquired
the Japanese company’s supplier of semi-processed
alloy in the USA, leaving it to either take the processing
in-house or find another source. If Kobe can secure a
new supply of semi-processed alloy it will probably build
a smaller plant, rated at around 100,000 metric tons of
aluminium sheet.
But, Mr Kato told Bloomberg: “Our intention to gain
access to the North American market has not changed.”
Technology
A new radar system holds promise
for minimising scrap from the steel
rolling process
Rolling and milling crude steel into strip steel generates
large quantities of scrap and offcuts. After its passage
through the rolls the strip often ends up too wide,
requiring it to be trimmed. In a typical day a steel mill may
accumulate several tons of such material.
Millimetre-wave radar developed by the Fraunhofer Institute
for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR)
measures the width of sheet steel during processing to
within micrometres.
The Wachtberg-based unit of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
(Munich) – Europe’s largest applications-orientated research
organisation – believes that this could yield considerable
cost savings by permitting self-adjustment throughout
rolling so that less scrap is produced.
In the FHR method, two radar sensors mounted at the side
of the rolls measure the distance to the edge of the sheet
steel. Describing it to R&D Magazine (Rockaway, New
Jersey), FHR scientist Nils Pohl suggested an analogy
with the echolocation mechanism that enables bats to
distinguish prey from obstacles.
“Our radar sends out continuous electromagnetic signals
that are reflected by the right and left edges of the strip,”
said Dr Pohl. “The transmitted and received signals are
then compared to each other with the help of numeric
algorithms. The width of the sheet can be calculated from
this comparison.” (“High-Precision Radar for the Steel
Industry,” 2nd March)
While lasers and cameras also measure very accurately,
they are not well adapted to deployment in environments
of high humidity and/or varied lighting. Hot strip steel must,
of course, be water-cooled during rolling; this forms dense
steam, especially in winter. An advantage claimed for the
FHR system is the excellent penetration of its radar signals
even in conditions of steam, fog, heat and dust.
Since the sensors are mounted at the sides of the rolls,
the FHR system could be readily integrated into existing
plants. Low transmitting power – less than that of a cell
phone – enables the high-frequency radar, which operates
with electromagnetic waves above 30GHz, to satisfy
ordinary safety requirements.
Intended for eventual mass-production, the system is
presently being tested at three steel mills in Germany.
Telecom
Net neutrality – the equality of all Internet
traffic – is approved: and the world
continues turning on its axis
On 26th February, the US Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), by a vote of three to two, enacted its
strongest-ever rules on net neutrality, preserving an open
Internet by prohibiting broadband providers from blocking
or slowing content that moves through their networks.
A substantial victory for President Barack Obama and
for the FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, this means that the
providers will not be able to block access to sites that they
consider competitive; nor will they be able to accelerate
access to sites that have paid them.
Tim Wu, a professor at New York’s Columbia Law School,
took the occasion to reflect on the unlikely prospects for
such an outcome, given the almost unanimous conviction
of “political cynics” that passage of strong rules would
be impossible. “Money,” Mr Wu wrote in the New Yorker,
“was certainly not on the side of net neutrality.”
Why, exactly, the pessimists were confounded is subject
to debate. It may have derived from the unexpected
effectiveness of Internet-based activist groups, which
helped convince millions of people to take an interest. (See
“British comedian,” below) It may have been the personal
involvement of Mr Obama, or a misperception of the
character of Tom Wheeler.
“Whatever the explanation,” Mr Wu wrote, “The most
pessimistic theories of lobbyist power clearly need be
revised.” (“Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality,”)
26 th February).
A case in point was the widespread idea that enacting
strong net-neutrality rules would lead to a collapse in the
value of broadband providers like Comcast and Verizon.
In a May 2014 letter to the FCC, 28 telecom industry CEOs
warned of an “investment-chilling effect” that would destroy
millions in market value. (Indeed, fears of a collapse had
helped back the commission away from enacting strong
rules in Mr Obama’s first term).