This photograph shows an aluminium slab being broken down on the 80" reversing hot break down mill. The milky emulsion is a 3% soluble oil in water mix that provided flood lubrication to cool the mill rolls and provide lubrication. In spite of the soluble oil lubrication a film of aluminium oxide would build up on the rolls as a "coating" which would peel off and cause defects in anodised strip products used for car trim ( AA 5000 series alloys) or beer barrels (AA6082 ), so a rotating wire "scratch brush" was used to strip the coating which was then filtered out of the coolant by a paper filter bed. The scratch brush is hidden behind the rectangular sheet panel visible at the top of the mill. It was supplied by Dendix International of Chepstow as a spirally wound continuous brush that avoided the need for oscillation required for segmental brushes.

This picture shows the slab now broken down to a 20mm thick "tandem" blank for transfer to the 3 stand warm (tandem) mill at the end of the hot mill line, after which it would be coiled for further cold rolling or possibly cut to length as plate.