METAL & ALLOY WIRES

Metal wires are flexible metal rods, which are usually cylindrical. They are designed to carry power and withstand loads and physical efforts.

How Metal Wire is Made; Metal wire production involves a number of different processes including casting, cold working, forging, extrusion, drawing, and rolling. These can be categorized into process groups that include the casting process, the joining and assembly process, the deformation process, the material removal process, the heat treatment process, and the finishing process.

Casting processes involve pouring molten metal into a mould cavity where, after solidification, the metal takes the shape of the cavity. Continuous casting processes allow the continuous production of standard shapes.

Joining and assembly processes include welding, soldering, brazing, fixing, and other processes that permanently or semi-permanently join parts to form a new unit. Deformation processes include metal forming, rolling, extrusion, forging, and sheet metal working processes. They use plastic deformation, where the deformation is induced by external compressive forces that exceed the elastic limit of the material.

The stock removal process removes excess material from the workpiece to obtain the desired shape. These include machining operations, abrasive machining, and unconventional processes using lasers and electron beams.

Heat treatment processes include annealing, quenching, tempering, ageing, homogenizing, solution treating, and precipitation hardening. Heat treatment modifies the strength, ductility, hardenability, machinability, and structure of metallic materials.

Finishing processes design the surface structure to produce the desired surface finish, texture, corrosion resistance, and fatigue strength of the metal form. Polished, burnished, shot blasted, galvanized, painted, oiled, waxed, oil-rubbed, veneered, and coated are the types of finishing processes.

Selection Criteria
Metal wire selection is generally based first on the size and shape required by the design, and then on the type or grade of material in accordance with certain design specifications or application constraints. Substitute materials can be selected and qualified based on the required physical properties. In some cases, laboratory, demonstration, or field tests are used to verify performance.

Sizes and Dimensions
The database has the ability to select parts based on shapes and dimensions. Metal wire dimensions include overall thickness, gauge thickness, overall width or outside diameter (OD), secondary width, overall length, and inside diameter (ID). In North America, wire area is specified according to American Wire Gauge (AWG) designations which represent the number of times a wire passes through a drawing machine. Larger gauges indicate the use of more reducing dies and therefore smaller wire sizes.

Types of Metals and Alloys
The database includes information and listings for a variety of metals and alloys. Each can be classified as either a ferrous or a non-ferrous metal.

Ferrous metals and alloys are metals that contain iron as the base metal in the alloy. Ferrous metal wires are used in a variety of industrial applications, including cables and structural supports.

Non-ferrous metals and alloys are those metals that do not contain iron as the base metal. Non-ferrous metals used to make wire and wire include aluminium, copper, and nickel. They are used in electrical cables, springs, medical devices, and as components of industrial equipment.