Aluminium Norf, or "Alunorf" for short, operates the largest aluminum smelting and rolling plant in the world. The company specializes in the production of hot-rolled and cold-rolled aluminium strips, which end customers use to manufacture cans, foils, offset printing plates and automotive parts, for example. Around 1.5 million tons of rolled aluminium leave the plant in Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia, every year, which employs around 2,200 people. The main site was founded in 1965 and now covers an area of around 577,000 m². This includes three large production areas: the smelting plant with the recycling center, the hot strip area and the cold strip area.

From ingot to coil in several steps

In the aluminum smelting plant, the material is first cast into ingots. From this, strips with a thickness of a few millimeters and a length of up to 2 km are produced in the hot rolling area. In the cold rolling area, the strips are then rolled down again to a thickness of just 0.15 mm - as thin as a sheet of paper. In the final step, the aluminum strips are cut to various widths and wound onto coils. Around 150,000 of these coils leave the factory every year.

To handle the coils, Alunorf has designed a system known as the "Coil Manipulator Input". At its heart is a crane that handles the freshly rolled aluminum coils directly in front of the high-bay warehouse. "The crane is a key point in production and places high demands on system availability," explains Thomas Bellinghausen from Aluminium Norf. "An unplanned breakdown blocks the upstream production steps after just a short time and is therefore critical."

It is therefore important that the system is always kept up to date with the latest technology. In 2021, Alunorf therefore turned its attention to the ageing trailing cable system and brought Tsubaki Kabelschlepp on board: "We have chains from Tsubaki Kabelschlepp in use in several areas without any problems," says Bellinghausen. "The price-performance ratio of the products and the services are excellent." There were two main reasons for renewing the cable carrier: on the one hand, new cables had been added for data transmission, which had to be routed additionally. On the other hand, they wanted to close a safety gap at the same time - the driver of the old Festoon system ran at standing height and made it very dangerous to stand on it during travel, for example for maintenance purposes. "The task was to design the carrier in such a way that the walkway or maintenance aisle remained clear while the system was moving," says Tobias Holschbach, Team Leader Application Engineering at Tsubaki Kabelschlepp. "Another requirement was to change the existing structure of the system as little as possible for static reasons."

Proven energy chain with individual adaptations

The experts at Tsubaki Kabelschlepp designed and supplied a customized substructure. This meant that the interfaces of the old suspension cable could be reused and the new energy chain was easy to install. Two MC0950 chains are used in a counter-rotating, gliding application. This makes it possible to route the data and power cables separately and thus prevent any interference. "The M-Series is part of our flexible Vario-Line," explains Holschbach. "It is a multi-variable cable carrier with a wide range of stay variants." The robust cable drag chains impress, among other things, with a particularly stable link plate design and minimized joint wear thanks to the cup-and-cover principle: the tensile and shear forces are not transmitted via the hole-bolt connection as usual, but via the large-area, encapsulated stop system. Replaceable glide shoes ensure a long service life even under high loads - if they are worn, they can simply be replaced.