Commercial application of ball unit domain refinement

Abstract
Various techniques have been developed for domain refinement and loss reduction of high permeability grain oriented electrical steel. A ball unit system has been devised by European Electrical Steels (EES) and three methods were considered suitable for commercial application of the system - circulatory, reciprocating and indexing. These have been assessed on a pilot line basis and are described in this paper. Extensive evaluation has shown that the maximum line speed for application of the methods is approximately 30m/min. An indexing method has been chosen for installation and final evaluation on an existing production line at Orb Electrical Steels (OES) and the system is expected to be commissioned in the near future.