Split Rolls and Combination Tooling

Rolls are split where necessary to facilitate machining, grinding or for change changes, and also to provide for easy replacement of a roll piece that might be subject to extreme wear.  In general, no roll pieces exceed 6” wide, meaning that wide shape rolls are made up in sections, sometimes even of different materials, according to the service requirement.  Such would be the case for a wide panel in which flats predominate, the flat roll pieces being a soft machine steel, the forming or working portions of tool steel.

Closely related to the subject of splitting rolls is the use of combination tooling, to enable a manufacturer to produce several shapes with a minimum of tooling outlay.  Note the similarity of sections #1 and #2 on Figure #14.  Combination tooling was provided for theses.  The basic set being that to the right of line XX with separate roll sets for the portions to the left of this line.

Looking at Section #3, splitting a set of channel rolls along line XX as shown, allows the forming of numerous widths simply by adding spacers at the split.

The shapes shown as #4 and #5 employ another type of combination roll arrangement involving split rolls with spacers for width in the first passes, a common set of bottom rolls, and two (2) sets of top rolls in the subsequent passes.