When planning new roll ing mills it is essential to pay close at tent ion to the experience of operation in the most recent mi l l s so that the mistakes made in the equipment, the planning of the shop, the mechanizat ion of the auxi l iary production, whic:: are revealed during operation, are not repeated . This position has not yet been fully apprec ia ted . New mills often have to be redesigned in the third to fifth years of operation. The four years of operat ion of the 1150 mm b looming and slabbing mi l l of the Alehev Plant have revealed many faults, they have been admit ted by the designers anff:wilI be removed this year during general overhauls; these faults were not e l imina ted in the recent ly inaugurated Cherepovets and Krivoi Rog blooming mills . We wil l dea l with some of the more important faults of the b looming mi l l below. The run-in table of the blooming mi l l extends so far into the bay of the heat ing pits that it can be serviced by only one claw crane. When this crane is at the end of its t ravel , the run-in table and the stationary ingot chair are under it and not one of the remaining three cranes can bring the ingots for roll ing without an ingot buggy. With unexpected stopping of the ingot buggy during these periods, the roil ing stops in general . For this reason (based on incomple te data) the blooming mi l l lost 130 hr in 3 years, thus leading to considerable losses. The table should be extended so that during repair of the first crane, the second can feed ingots freely into the stationary ingot chair. In our opinion, further extension would not be justified. The stationary ingot chair should be transferred from the line of the mi l l to the rotat ing table , as is done in the 1150 mm blooming mi l l of the Dzerzhinskii Plant, and the run-in tables and the claw crane should be designed so that ingots can be fed di rec t ly onto the table . Figure 1 shows the arrangement of the run-in section of a 1150 mm blooming mi l l existing (a) and proposed, more eff icient (b). The recept ion of the cut-off sections into the water pit and their col lec t ion are by means of electromagnets . This method is not very eff icient since a crane of c a p a c i ty 30 tons with a magnet , able to lift 20 tons, in the best case lifts 2-4 cut sections of total weight up to 1 89 ~ons and with this " load" it travels an average of 20 m to Ioad the rotating stand from four 80-ton platforms. Therefore, 60-70% of a l l the cut sections must be loaded into the cars by cranes which were intended for bi l le t transport. This disrupts the normal operation of the adjusting equipment and damages the cranes. The col lect ion of the cut section can be speeded up by using a box. This is condi t ional upon the dimensions of the pit , the height of the crane rails, the capac i ty and disposition of the main and auxi l iary hooks of the crane.