Abstract: In a process and apparatus for the continuous casting of slabs and blooms which uses a soft-reduction line including a pair of movable rollers arranged in a plane perpendicular to slab movement and a mechanism for driving the rollers towards each other and an adjustable spindle for holding the rollers apart by a desired gap, the load on the spindle is reduced during the spindle adjustment process. This reduction in load may be temporary in which case, after the adjustment is complete and the new gap has been established, the spindle load is retuned to its pre-adjustment value. Alternatively, the spindle can operate in a reduced load condition permanently in which case the desired gap can be set continuously using the reduced-load spindle with only a small spindle adjustment force being necessary.