Development of Domestic Small-sized Seamless Steel Pipe Mills

Briefed in the paper is the development of the small-sized seamless steel pipe mill in China. Comments are made on several major types of the mill, and in particularity, an objective evaluation is made on the manufacturing process of the piercing-drawing mill line. Viewed from general development of the steel tube-making industry, the development trend of the small-sized seamless steel tube-making field is analyzed. As a result, it is concluded that, the future construction and development of the small-sized mandrel mill would focus on the home-made Φ114 mm and Φ89 mm mandrel mills; for building of high/middle-end product-aiming mills with a moderate capacity, the CPE mill would be a good choice; the rotary-rolling pipe mill would be retained in the future development; the innovated plug mill would be rather competitive for the sake of producing low/middle-end products; and the piercing-drawing mill would eventually and gradually get back to the early production mode, i.e., producing cold-drawn pipes only.