Choosing between wet and dry wire drawing isn’t always obvious from a product spec sheet alone. Both processes produce drawn wire, but the conditions under which each operates, and the wire characteristics each handles best, are different enough that defaulting to whichever process a facility happens to have running can mean operating outside the process…
ASTM A227 and A228 are among the most commonly referenced wire standards in the spring manufacturing and wire drawing industries, and they cover products that represent significant volume in most wire drawing operations serving mechanical application markets. Despite their familiarity, aspects of these standards are regularly misunderstood or incompletely applied, which creates quality and conformance…
Wire rod from a steel mill arrives at a wire drawing factory as the starting material for everything that follows, which makes its quality characteristics foundational to drawing performance, die life, and finished wire quality. Yet incoming rod quality inspection at many wire drawing operations is less rigorous than the downstream quality monitoring applied to…
Die cost reduction initiatives at wire drawing factories typically start in one of two places: either a conversation with the die supplier about getting better pricing or a specification upgrade to a premium grade die expected to last longer per tonne. Both approaches have merit in the right circumstances, but neither addresses the process conditions…