On February 9, 2017, the first DANCU gearbox was shipped to Zaporizhstal in Ukraine after completing a twenty day workshop test, including six full days of continuous running to simulate the operational situation at the client's site. The gearbox is supplied under a contract signed in 2016 for the supply of a complete Top Charging System for the Blast Furnace No. 3 at Zaporizhstal, which is currently undergoing a modernization.

The DANCU technology is a co-development by Danieli Corus and Danieli Centro Metallics. It was developed with the objectives of achieving unparallelled availability and easiest maintainability. All main components are designed and manufactured to be failure–free or redundant for fully uninterrupted operations. Some highlights are:

• Fully hydraulic operation to eliminate the vulnerabilities of existing electro-mechanical designs
• Full redundancy of tilting and rotation equipment
• Bigger main bearing to prevent torque inversion
• Closed circuit cooling

In addition, given the client's operating environment, the design for this project was modified for blast furnace operation on hot sinter. To accommodate this practice in this cold environment, all major equipment is engineered and manufactured for the ability to accept raw materials with temperatures up to 700 degrees as well as e.g. frozen coke.

The DANCU gearbox will be installed during the current blast furnace modernization. A second, spare unit will also be shipped to the client under the same contract.