Locations
Bowling Green, Kentucky, U.S. - Aluminium Manufacturing Plant | Constellium
The manufacturing plant in Bowling Green, KY, produces finished flat rolled aluminum sheet products for the growing automotive market in North America. The manufacturing plant houses a capacity of 100,000 metric tons.
The plant supplies 5 and 6xxx alloys, and 7xxx alloys for ultra high strength requirements, with a wide spectrum of thicknesses and width, and provides coils and sheets for closures inners, outers and body in white.
About Bowling Green
In May 2014 Constellium and UACJ signed an agreement to supply automotive body sheet to the North American automotive industry under a joint venture, Constellium-UACJ ABS LLC.
Bowling Green offers a leading product portfolio covering the entire range of flat rolled sheet products for closure panels and structural parts, with a significant industrial capacity to serve the North American automotive body sheet market.
The manufacturing plant is ideally located near major OEMs plants and houses a capacity of 100,000 metric tons of finished coils and sheets which can be directly stamped by OEMs or Tier1 stamping units.
The plant supplies 5 and 6xxx alloys, and 7xxx alloys for ultra high strength requirements, with a wide spectrum of thicknesses and width, and provides coils and sheets for closures inners, outers and body in white.
In January 2019 Constellium acquired the remaining 49% stake in Constellium-UACJ ABS, LLC (CUA) to become fully owned by Constellium.
Bowling Green, Kentucky, U.S. - Aluminium Manufacturing Plant | Constellium
Type : Plant
Constellium Bowling Green LLC
714 Commonwealth Blvd
Bowling Green, Kentucky 42101-8074
United States
Tel: + 1 (270) 715-9407
Finished flat rolled aluminium sheet products
Manufacturing capacity
Finishing Line with a capacity of approx. 100,000 ton per year within 7.000 hours.
Material: .................................................... cold rolled aluminum strip for Series 5.xxx, 6.xxx, O, T4
Strip width: ................................................ min. 700 mm, max. 2,200 mm
Strip Width accuracy: ............................... 0 / +1.5 mm
Strip thickness: ......................................... min. 0.5 mm, max. 3.2 mm
Coil inside diameter: ................................. 508 mm / 610 mm without sleeve
Coil outside diameter:............................... min. 1,500 mm, max. 2,667 mm
Coil weight: ............................................... max. 24,000 kg, min. 9,000 kg
The plant uses top notch technology including:
- High speed of thermal treatment
- Precise control of temperature
- Highly efficient quench
- Chemical section with 2 spray zones for two types of conversion material
This high technology opens new possibilities for enhanced metallurgical properties
- Higher strength products, higher formability, higher crash performance
- And high surface quality in terms of roping & hemming properties
The heat treatment oven consists of 12 sections. The thermal cycle has temperatures in excess of 500° and is determined through thermal simulation for each product, and then confirmed in the qualification process.
The water quench unit enables to produce high strength and high ductility heat treatable alloys. The air quench unit brings the coils to room temperature.
The surface of the sheet is either acid cleaned or pretreated according to customer specifications.
The performance in paintability, weldabililty and corrosion resistance of the final automotive body sheets are determined through this line.
The Completion Line is used for sample cutting, as well as, center cutting, rewinding and inspection of the aluminum coils once they have cooled to room temperature. Operators are trained to detect surface defects that can affect the final appearance of the vehicle painted surface.
Line Speed: 0 – 200 m/min
Physical Testing: Tensile strength tests measure the force required to break a sample and the extent of elongation of the sample at the break point.
Chemical Testing: Chemical testing ensures delivery of a coil with the proper surface treatment. Key items measured are pH, conductivity, concentration. The chemical testing lab is also used to ensure that the plant is meeting our obligations to the environment.
The line is an automatic coil packing line. The coil is transferred by overhead crane to the coil deposit station where operator reads barcode and the coil gets product data from MES.
Bowling Green has been designed to optimize all waste and minimize our environmental footprint by tight control of air emissions and tight retention on our surface treatment workshop.