Skin pass wire drawing of stainless steel with chlorine free lubricant with the aid of ultrasonic vibration

Precision stainless steel wires used for automobile parts are being increasingly manufactured with fewer finish grinding operations in order to reduce their cost. However, since the materials are very difficult to draw, when they are drawn, the use of lubricants with very high viscosity and/or the inclusion of extreme-pressure additives such as chlorine is unavoidable. This, in turn, requires strong and non-environmentally friendly degreasing agents such as fluorocarbons or 1,1,1-trichloroethane and moreover, emits dioxin when lubricants including chlorine additives are finally incinerated. In this study, a solution for the problems, whereby ultrasonic wire drawing is utilized, has been proposed in an effort to enable the use of low viscosity and in particular, chlorine-free lubricants, We could achieve this goal by applying either radial or weak axial ultrasonic vibration to the drawing die.