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wiredInUSA - March 2013
wiredInUSA - March 2013
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PRODUCTS - MACHINES
TECHNOLOGY
INDEXPlasma annealer
A new plasma annealer, designed for
stainless steel and nickel alloy wire, tube and
rope and with cross-sections from 20mm
2
and below, is available from Plasmait.
This new unit is said to offer higher continuous
annealing speeds for stainless steel and
nickel alloys – over 15m per second for fine
wire sizes. Annealing can be performed
in-line with drawing or rolling, substituting
multiple lines of a traditional tube furnace.
Efficient energy coupling in the plasma
process allows for a compact design of the
plasma chamber and results in high-energy
conversion efficiency. Annealing power is
controlled accurately and instantaneously
via the power supply.
Rapid heating and reduced recrystallization
timeresultsinfinegrainsizewithuniformcrystal
structure in the longitudinal and transversal
direction,
improving
the
material’s
susceptibility to cold working and its
resistance to surface cracking. Ion
bombardment or ion sputtering on the
material surface results in fine dry surface
cleaning and surface oxide removal, of
particularly benefit to applications with
demanding surface requirements in sectors
such as medical, welding or aerospace.
Unlike the traditional tube furnace, the
plasma annealer can cold start production
in just a few minutes and can be stopped
immediately. This avoids lengthy heating-up
andcooling-down times and theassociated
energy costs of a conventional furnace.
The gas cooling section in the plasma
annealer has a closed loop design to
minimize purging gas consumption.
Emirates expands to 40mm
Emirates Steel, producer of high quality
rebar, wire rod and heavy sections, has now
enhanced its facility in the Industrial City
of Abu Dhabi to manufacture 40mm
reinforcing steel bars to meet growing
demand in the region. Emirates Steel’s
range includes rebar and rebar in coil, wire
rod, and hot rolled structural steel sections.
“We are happy to announce that we have
added a new 40mm size to our existing
range of 8mm to 32mm rebar,” said
Engineer Saeed G Al Romaithi, CEO of