An Initial Discussion on Wall Thickness Tolerances of Seamless Steel Tubes Hot-rolled with Three Different Types of Pipe Mills

The wall thickness tolerance of hot-rolled seamless steel tubes is a major issue which has to be addressed in case of operation of any newly-built or modified hot-rolling tube mill.Briefed here in the paper are the basic manufacturing process flows and operation practices of several types of tube mills.Random inspections of wall thickness tolerances of the tubes as produced by the said tube mills are made,based on which,the tube wall thickness tolerance as resulting from each individual mill and the elements responsible for the wall thickness tolerance are analyzed.