EuroWire November 2018

Technology News

Wire drawing taken to the next level

It was decided that for the practical use of the machine, the cooling system of the die had to be indirect, so that no lubricant would get into the cooling water. The research department developed a very practical pressurised chamber in which the die could be inserted. The chamber was designed to allow high-pressure turbulent water flow with an enhanced exchange surface so that heat could be extracted in the most efficient way. Tests proved that the new system extracted, at the same production speed, over 25 per cent more heat than the standard indirect cooling system and 13 per cent more heat than convential direct die cooling. Lubricant stirrers were installed on each die box to allow proper wire lubrication at all times and avoid the formation of a tunnel within the lubricant box. The stirrers’ movement was made pro- grammable, to stir the lube only when needed. The spooler was thought to be one of the biggest challenges in the design of the machine. A spool of two tons rotating up to 950 rpm is dangerous and must be fixed to the spooler in a safe manner. The research department took as its base the standard spooler and calculated the frame stiffness and sized the pintles with the appropriate safety factors. EurodrawWire Equipment Srl – Italy Website : www.gcreurodraw.com

EURODRAW Wire equipment has just completed the supply of a newly designed machine that takes wire drawing to the next level. Unprecedented cooling capabilities allow production speeds that are in excess of 50m/sec on final wire sizes of 1.3mm, starting from wire rod. The machine has 12 blocks and is designed to draw low and medium carbon steel wire from 5.5mm down to 1.3mm. The wire is then wound on a heavy-duty spooler with two-ton capacity. The company’s R&D department was asked to develop the fastest possible machine and to reach the target perfomances; the focus was mainly on the cooling system, the die cooling, the spooler and the electronic controls. The original Eurodraw cooling system was used as a starting base but in order to reach speeds of 50m/sec it was necessary to make improvements. After four months of trials and studies the cooling system was 73 per cent more efficient than the standard system and the heat removal was sufficient to ensure that the temperature of the wire entering the dies was always below 55°C. The cooling water temperature gradient is up over 3°C from the 5°C of the original cooling system. An additional high-volume convective air-cooling system was added to the blocks to remove the heat that was not possible to be removed by conductivity.

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November 2018