To set up operations in East and North India
The Chennai based Orient Impex which produces niche products for Infrastructure, Process Industries has drawn up plans to expand and take advantage of the huge business opportunity in areas like Mining, Mineral processing, Cement, Road construction machinery, Concrete making and transportation, Coal and ash handling, Excavators, Wear liners and feeders etc.
According to Mr. P.E. Ramakrishnan, Managing Partner, Orient Impex, “the thrust areas as envisaged by the GOI will provide a fine opportunity to scale up and move into unexplored areas like auto components, where currently post hardening is practiced, machined parts for general engineering where conventional alloy steels are used and quenched at enormous challenge with risk of rework, manufactured sand that will soon replace river bed mining, amongst others. Orient Impex has plans to replicate the facilities of Chennai in the mining centres of Eastern India and engineering centres of Northern India and thereby double the current turnover to Rs.60 crores in the next 2 years.”
He further said that Orient Impex has a long standing relationship with the Stockholm based SSAB Swedish Steel and now both the companies want to formalize this relationship, thereby, garnering a better market share in the industry.
Orient Impex is focused on industries that are impacted by abrasive wear and managing it. There are disparate solutions available and the one that we at Orient Impex are focused on is the Steel based solutions. The steel is a heat treated material with high hardness and combined with very good toughness that is a difficult combination in itself. The product is called Hardox, which is made by a Swedish company of repute called SSAB. The material is homogenous, rolled and water quenched steel plate, in thickness ranging from 3 mm upto 165 mm and hardness values starting from 400 BHN upwards.
Working on Hardox is not easy and if inappropriate methods are employed that might suit simpler steels, the material will lose some or most of its wear resistant properties. Understanding the characteristics of the material and employing the correct procedure and sequence then enables one to retain the properties and also be able to work on this material effectively.
We have developed a set of processes and tools to machine, drill, roll into cones or cylinders, weld Hardox into different shapes. As the steel is sensitive to heating, we have to employ methods that take care of this limitation to be able to give a solution that works to the satisfaction of the user industries.
We use thermal cutting methods like underwater plasma, gas cutting or laser. We drill and countersink using fairly conventional machines or where needed, CNC machining centres as are appropriate. We use CNC milling machines or machining centres as are appropriate for machining on Hardox. What is significant are the methods and tools; the technique and procedures.