During our visits to many steel companies around the world, we found that some of them focus too much on the service life of ladle slide gate plate and lower nozzle, some even ask for more than 10 heats, here are some of our opinions on this condition:

1.Longer service life slide gate plate and lower nozzle leads to more accidents. After being used for some time, leakages are tend to happen at the joints or molten steel could penetrate from the bodies. In addition to that, workers has different opinions on the using conditions of them, if a certain long life is fixed, accidents could easily happen;

2.Longer service life not necessarily mean less or easier work. Everyone knows Chinese steel industry is very mature, but the Chinese steel plants prefer one heat ladle slide gate plate or four heats at most, that’s because the sliding mechanism they choose is very easy to operate, it takes only less than 1 minutes to change the slide gate plates and lower nozzle, many of the long service life ladle slide gate plate and lower nozzle are with sliding mechanisms take 10 to 20 minutes to do that, which would affect the production procedure and increase workload;

3.Longer service life not necessarily equals to lower cost. The prices for long service life ladle slide gate plate and lower nozzles are normally very high, if something happens and the production has to be stopped, the ladle slide gate plate and lower nozzle can not be used again after cooling, which will be wasted.

Overall, we think it will be better if the customers choose ladle slide gate plate and lower nozzles according to their practical needs, not just based on which are with longer service life.

The source :http://www.chinafirebrick.com/Company_News_71.html