Strip Width Measurement

Width gages were first used in Hot Strip Mills in the early 1950's. They were typically positioned at the exit of the finishing train and mounted in a house for protection against the hot mill environment, and to permit easy access for frequent, routine maintenance.

Today, there is a much wider range of applications for width gages in Hot Strip Mills:

• at rougher entry and exit for Automatic Width Control (AWC)
• at rougher exit for camber measurement
• at crop shear entry for Crop Optimization
• at finishing train entry for strip steering
• in between finishing stands for Automatic Gage Control (AGC)*
• at finisher exit for correlation with thickness measurement
• at coiler entry to confirm width coiled

There are many width gage suppliers around the world whose products can be used in the least demanding of these applications, but only the KELK Accuband Strip Width Gage has proven superior in all of them.

The Accuband is a stereoscopic width gage with special features developed by KELK to enable it to outperform all other gages in the most demanding HSM environments. It can:

- withstand the shock of working directly on a roughing stand
- keep itself clean for long periods of time without routine maintenance
- measure without backlighting at lower strip temperatures than any other gage
- detect strip edges despite the presence of steam and spray
- be calibrated online using a dynamic calibrator traceable to NIST

Some KELK innovations - such as the KELK Air Nozzle introduced in 1982 - are now being widely copied by other width gage manufacturers, but no one has ever been able to duplicate ACCUBAND performance. In direct comparison tests no other gage has ever been proven to measure moving strip more accurately. And no other gages have worked as long as Accuband without becoming obsolete.

Continuous development has kept the KELK Accuband ahead of all competitors, and makes it the best value in width measurement.

(*KELK is the only width gage supplier to succeed in this application!)