Iron and steel industry committee

Reversing Mill Drive Equipment At present, economic conditions are such that an expansion of steel mills to produce a greater tonnage of steel is not important, and reversing mill electrification consists mainly in revamping present plants. This is either done by installing an electric reversing mill equipment in place of a steam engine, or it may be that the mill itself is obsolete, and the mill with its drive is replaced with electric drive and a new mill. This is usually done in order to replace worn out machinery, or to obtain advantage of lower cost of production. In the last two years, considerable attention has been given to the cost of producing steel and the reversing mill drive has received as much attention as any other type of mill. Considerable cost data are being published from time to time on electrically driven mills, so that it is a simple matter for those who are considering the installation of an electric reversing equipment to determine their cost with a very great degree of accuracy. This is something that has not been available heretofore, due to the difficulty in actually determining the amount of steam an engine takes. Several reversing engine installations have recently been made on the basis of obtaining some very substantial improvements in economy, but no results have been published from their installations, so that it is only natural to infer that the results which they had anticipated have not materialized.