Patent ID: 8387681

Claim:
A strand guiding apparatus for continuous casting equipment, comprising: at least two pairs of rollers, each pair of said pairs of rollers being provided for sandwiching a strand, the two pairs of rollers being mutually arranged in the vertical direction such that the strand is guided to move in a vertical direction in accordance with contact with the at least two vertically arranged pairs of rollers; a drive motor for generating a driving force to drive at least one roller of at least one of the pairs of rollers; a worm reducer for transmitting the driving force of the drive motor to the at least one roller of the at least one of the pairs of rollers while reducing the rotational speed of the drive motor, the worm reducer having a worm extending in a direction orthogonal to an axis of the at least one roller of the at least one of the pairs of rollers, and operable to transmit a load occurring at the roller to the drive motor; and a control unit for controlling the rotational speed of the at least one roller and/or the driving force of the drive motor based on the load to the drive motor, and wherein the worm of the worm reducer has a lead angle providing a speed reduction rate of 1/40 or lower so that the worm reducer is in a non-self-locking operational region.