3. Production of unwound sheets and blanks by cutting to length and levelling

3.1 Process

The process of transforming a coil into sheets or blanks involves three distinct phases:

• planing ;

• cutting to length (and width, if necessary, by bypassing);

• stacking sheets and blanks.

The last two phases are purely technological in nature, and call for no special comment. The same cannot be said for levelling.

With the advent of laser-cutting machines, customer demands for flatness in sheets and blanks have increased dramatically. There are two types of related requirements:

• on the one hand, to flatness in the classical sense, as defined in standards...