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Wire drawing
machinery
&
technology
Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2009
Photo courtesy of
Team Meccanica SpA
The entry ‘Wire Drawing’ in the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia is brief,
thorough, and unassailable:
Making of wire, generally from a rod or bar. The wire drawing process consists
of pointing the rod, threading the pointed end through a die, and attaching the
end to a drawing block. The block, made to revolve by an electric motor, pulls
the lubricated rod through the die, reducing it in diameter and increasing its
length. Fine wire is made by a multiple-block machine, because the reduction
cannot be performed in a single draft.
It may seem remarkable that this remains a useful definition when so much more equipment
has found a home in the corner of the plant reserved to drawing: flattening mills and closers;
breakdown machines; bull blocks and motor blocks; draw benches and drawing frames and
Turk’s-heads; rigid, tubular, and planetary stranders. To say nothing of the exotic – deadbeat
and dieless – and the auxiliary: welders, straighteners, payoffs, cutters.
In fact, wire drawing retains its integrity, in concept and in practice, because every addition
to the process, every enhancement, represents an answer to a need. The Britannica has
it right. Wire making and wire drawing are one and the same. The wire and cable industry
has enjoyed steady, organic growth for one reason only: the development, in parallel, of the
technology and machinery of wire drawing.