The utility of radially and ultrasonically vibrated dies in the wire drawing process

In the field of wire drawing, the use of high-viscosity lubricants, which would inevitably require the use of strong and nonenvironmentally friendly degreasing agents such as fluorocarbons or 1,1,1-trichloroethane, has been restricted in order to reduce environmental pollution. This problem can be solved, for example, by using low viscosity lubricants such as water-soluble oil. However, this generally results in poor drawing performance which must be solved in some other way. In this study, first, a solution to the problem, wherein radially and ultrasonically vibrated wire drawing dies are utilized (RVD operation in short), is proposed to enable the use of low viscosity and, in particular, chlorine-free lubricants. Second, it is verified by both theory and experiment that the RVD operation is effective in increasing the critical speed in ultrasonic wire drawing by about 10 times that of the axially vibrated dies (AVD operation in short) that have been used conventionally. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.