How to improve the service life of wire drawing dies?

1. Try to choose suitable processing and producing carbide wire drawing dies.

The wire drawing dies produced by ZZBETTER are pressed and formed by imported presses and sintered in an overpressure sintering furnace. And use a special microscope for checking the wire drawing die to check the surface finish.

2. Select the wire drawing die produced from raw materials

At present, many manufacturers use recycled materials for production in order to save costs. The drawing dies produced from recycled materials are cheap, but there are problems with wear resistance and service life. All businesses must look carefully when purchasing drawing dies. The wire drawing dies produced by ZZBETTER use raw tungsten powder with a purity of more than 99.95% as the main raw material, with low impurity content and no frying. Using exclusive formula technology and adding wear-resistant element materials, the service life of the wire drawing die is greatly improved.

3. The installation and use of wire drawing machine equipment should be reasonable

(1) The installation foundation of the wire drawing machine needs to be very stable to avoid vibration;

(2) During installation, the tensile axis of the wire should be symmetrical with the centerline of the die hole through debugging so that the stress of the wire and the wire drawing die is uniform.

(3) Avoid frequent start and stop during the wire drawing process because the friction caused by the tensile stress at the start of the drawing is much larger than the friction during normal drawing, which will inevitably increase the wear of the mold.

4. The wire used for drawing should be pretreated

（1）Surface pretreatment: for the wire with a dirty surface and many impurities, it must be cleaned and dried before drawing; for the wire with more oxide scale on the surface, it must be pickled and dried first. Then pull it out; for the wires with peeling, pitting, heavy skin, and other phenomena on the surface, they should be ground by a polishing machine before pulling;

（2）Heat treatment: For the wire with excessive hardness or uneven hardness, the hardness should be reduced by annealing or tempering first, and the wire should maintain good hardness uniformity before drawing.

5. Maintain a suitable drawing area reduction rate

The carbide wire drawing die itself has the characteristics of hard and brittle. If it is used for diameter reduction drawing with a large area reduction rate, it is easy to cause the die to withstand the stress and be broken and scrapped. Therefore, it is necessary to select the appropriate wire according to the mechanical properties of the wire. The area reduction ratio is drawn. The stainless steel wire is drawn with a cemented carbide die, and the surface shrinkage rate of a single pass is generally not more than 20%.

6. Use lubricants with good lubricating properties

During the drawing process, the quality and the sufficient supply of lubricant will affect the service life of the wire drawing die. Therefore, it is required that the lubricant oil base is stable, has good oxidation resistance, excellent lubricity, cooling, and cleaning properties, and always maintains a good lubricating state throughout the production process so as to form a layer that can withstand high pressure without being damaged. The film can reduce the friction in the working area and improve the service life of the mold. During the use process, the condition of the lubricating oil should be continuously observed. If the lubricating oil has any discoloration or metal powder, it should be replaced or filtered, which can avoid oxidation and small falling off during the drawing process. Metal particles damage the mold.

7. Regular maintenance and repair of drawing dies

During the long-term use of the wire drawing die, the die wall is subjected to strong friction and erosion by the metal wire, which will inevitably cause wear. The ring groove of the wire-pulling die aggravates the wear of the die hole because the core material peeled off. A loose ring groove is brought into the working area and the sizing area of the die hole by the metal wire, which acts as an abrasive and enters the die hole. The wire is like grinding needles, which aggravates the wear of the die hole. If it is not replaced and repaired in time, the ring groove will continue to expand at an accelerated rate, making repair more difficult, and there may even be cracks in the deeper part of the ring groove, causing the mold to be completely broken and scrapped.

From experience, it is very cost-effective to formulate a set of standards, strengthen daily maintenance, and frequently repair the mold. Once the mold has any slight wear, timely polishing will take less time to restore the mold to its original polished state, and the mold hole size will not change significantly.

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