Abstract
Conventional automatic thickness controls for rolling mills have a ray-gauge with a feedback loop to a previous mill stand. Such feedback controls have associated with them a transport delay which means they are not normally activated until 25% of full speed or even later. This results in a large amount of head-end off-gauge material. The control described herein has no transport delay and as such can be activated with full gain at thread speed. The result is a dramatic reduction in head-end off-gauge material.