WCA September 2007

Technology news

Mechanical wire descalers = no chemicals

Steel wire which is drawn down to size, starts from larger diameter rods. The rod and intermediate diameter coiled wire needs to be properly descaled prior to being drawn, as ferrous oxides and other impurities on the surface of the material form and need to be removed, in order to reduce die wear and to achieve a good surface finish on the final wire being processed. There are two conventional methods to remove the scale on the wire. The first method is chemical descaling, which uses liquid substances and chemicals to remove the surface oxidation. The second method uses mechanical descalers to descale wire without the addition of any chemicals, providing an environmentally friendly yet effective method of removing surface oxides on wire and rod. This system can also be used directly in line with the wire drawing machine or wire former, which increases production efficiency. Mechanical descalers, offered by OMF of Italy through Howar Equipment in North America, use a system of specially positioned tungsten carbide or hardened steel rollers which bend the wire in numerous axes in order to ‘deform’ and elongate the wire. The elongation and bending causes the brittle and stiff surface oxide to break away from the softer and elastic wire. Since the wire is bent in multiple directions by each roller that is placed in a different position and axis, the oxide is able to be attacked no matter where it lies on the circumference of the wire.

Once out of the reverse-bending section of the descaler, the wire is further cleaned by one or two sets of rotating and orbiting wire brushes, which ensure that any residual surface impurities are removed. As a last step, the wire passes through an air-jet cleaning nib, which clears loose particles from the wire. The use of the reverse-bending and brushing of

the wire leaves a wire which is clean and free of surface oxides. The entire mechanical descaling system can be easily installed in-line with a wire drawing or wire forming machine.

Howar Equipment Inc – Canada Fax : +1 905 738 2474

Email : sales@howarequipment.com Website : www.howarequipment.com

FTTH additions from Prysmian

Prysmian Cables & Systems launched further additions to its growing Fibre- to-the-Home (FTTH) product range at CommunicAsia 2007 – Asia’s major communications and IT exhibition and conference which was held in Singapore from June 19 th -22 nd . Visitors got the chance to see the latest advances in telecoms and IT technology from 1,500 companies.

Prysmian Telecom Cables & Systems – Italy Email : info@prysmian.com Website : www.prysmian.com

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2007