EoW January 2009

feature

Photo courtesy of Continuus-Properzi SpA

Wire drawing machines for ferrous & non-ferrous “The successful candidate will have experience in wire drawing, cabling, bunching, and dies.” The help-wanted advert posted on an engineering search engine makes the incidental point that wire drawing is first among equals. That holds for the plant at large. If the drawing operation is sub-par, it matters little what else the company gets right. That the prospective employer did not construe experience more fully makes another incidental point. Makers of wire drawing machinery have put so much technology at the service of the operator that experience has come to mean a ready familiarity with the equipment as much as with the process. Drawing wire has always been an exacting procedure. But now, given the control and reproducibility possible with a state-of-the-art drawing machine, precise measurements of inlet diameter, bell radius, entrance angle, approach angle, bearing, and back relief are not ideals – they are realities, every time. The block rotates evenly, runs true, and pulls the wire at a constant velocity. Elongation is taken up and any slip compensated for. Automatically. The interface of man and machine will always call for an experienced person. The providers of the products and services reviewed here have taken the guesswork out of the judgment calls.

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EuroWire – January 2009