EuroWire January 2022

Technology News

Cold welders PWM’s two best-selling cold welders are the EP500 and M101 models. The pneumatically powered EP500 machine provides a cost-effective method of welding non-ferrous material within the range 5 to 15mm. It is energy-efficient, clean and quiet. No set up is required and the heavy-duty machine is simple to operate and maintain. The manually operated M101 is a robust, reliable cold welder for copper wire from 1 to 3.6mm and aluminium from 1 to 5mm. It can be used on a workbench or supplied with a cart, so it can be easily moved to the work area. For joining fine wire in confined spaces, the M10 and M25 handheld cold welders are suitable for wire from 0.1 to 1.2mm. The larger BM10 and BM30 models, for similar wire sizes, can be used on a workbench or with a cart.

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The M101 cold welder

The company’s cold welding machines and dies – standard or custom made to suit round or profile wire and rod – are designed and made in its own UK workshops. PWM also makes specialist trapezoidal dies used for welding material for use in sub-sea cables. PWM Ltd www.pwmltd.co.uk

Accurate layer winding: more than just good looks

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operator continuously supervising the winding process and manually optimising the laying pattern using handheld “sticks”. Horizontal layer winding machines have used computer-controlled traversing systems for more than 30 years. Every millisecond, the system can control the spool position and its rotation angle. This alone is not the key to failure-free layer winding: the wire does not follow the traverse movement precisely enough, because in a standard machine design, the distance between the last guide roll and the spool’s core is too great. Fuhr’s solution to shorten the unguided wire portion is to use a guide wheel that dives between the spool flanges. It almost touches the previously wound layers and the free wire length is as short as possible. The wheel is moved out of the spool by a servomotor as the core grows, layer by layer. With an optimised geometrical layout, the laying conditions stay constant over the entire spooling process. A second drive moves the wheel parallel to the spool’s traverse movement. This movement makes the wire travel between the guide wheel’s edges and compen- sates for different widths of wire or strip.

People have a tendency to judge things by first sight: if something looks nice, we consider it to be good. If wire or strip is properly layer wound on a reel by the producer, customers are more likely to assume it is of high quality. However, there are other reasons for accurate layer winding, such as less surface damage due to winding; no tangling when paid off; and more stability when shipped as spool-less coils. For safety concerns and for cost reasons, it is unlikely to be practical to have an

Precision layer winding

Fuhr GmbH & Co KG www.fuhr-wire.com

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January 2022