The main reversing roughing mill of a steel mill was experiencing problems with the accuracy of alignment of the rolls. This was caused by corrosion attacking the mill housing face, affecting the stability of the wear plates and consequently reducing their ability to control the tight tolerances required for the roll assemblies.

This refurbishment project had to be undertaken within a narrow timescale with minimal disruption of steel production. The work involved setting up a portable purpose-built machine to mill the housing posts in four positions in order to restore the tolerances to original accuracies. The finish-machined sizes were within 0.05mm for squareness and parallelism.

After months of planning and preparation to ensure the smooth running of the project, it was completed on site within seven days.