Continuous Casting

Continuous casting, also called strand casting, is the process by which molten metal is solidified into a semifinished billet, bloom or slab for subsequent rolling in a finishing mill, rather than being poured into stationary molds to form individual ingots as it was before the process was introduced in the 1950s. Since its introduction it has evolved to deliver better yield, quality, productivity and cost efficiency, offering lower-cost production with more consistent quality because of the inherently lower costs of continuous, standardized, automated production. It is used most heavily to cast steel by tonnage, though aluminium and copper are also continuously cast. Sir Henry Bessemer, already known for the Bessemer converter, patented a related system for casting metal between two counter-rotating rollers in 1857, and a version of that same basic layout has since been applied to the continuous casting of steel strip.