Drawing and annealing of aluminum alloys

Hello,

Our company is interested on starting to produce 8000 series aluminum and 6201 aluminum alloy conductors. We don't have any experiencie or much knowledge on the drawing and annealing of this alloys.

Can you help me with information about drawing and in line resistance annealing (or any other type of annealing best recommended for these alloys) of both 8000 series aluminum and 6201 aluminum alloy??? Info on Drawing lubricants, quench additive for annealing, annealing equipment, process parameters, drawing sizes, etc is welcome.

Regards,

Rodrigo O'Byrne

Hello,

In order to get the very latest in practical processing of these aluminum alloys, we suggest you contact your potential alloy rod suppliers and obtain their advice. Then compile, compare and seek clarification.from each of them.

Hello Peter,

We haven't contacted any suppliers for these materials yet, we wanted to get some of the know-how of the processing before doing it. If you have something, I would really appreciate it.

Rodrigo

Hello again Rodrigo,

I have very little to share with you as my processing experience was "arms-length" some 35 years ago and was exclusively with 6201 aluminum alloy. At that time, drawing with conventional aluminum lubricants and a well built and maintained tapered draft drawing machine was of no difficulty. Annealing however was a batch process requiring very precise temperature throughout the annealer. I would suggest a good commercial annealer from say a company like EBNER Industrieofenbau GmbH ( www.ebner.cc/ ) I have no practical experience at all with the 8076 and 8176 aluminum alloys.

The WAI Online Store ( portal.wirenet.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx...39-9d5b-6c2fc455dd79 ) shows the book, Nonferrous Wire Handbook, Vol. 3 (1995) for sale to members for US $95.00 and $US 125.00 to non-members. There is however very little about aluminum alloy processes. (Perhaps 20 pages.)

I really suggest therefore that you go back to my original recommendation and deal with your potential aluminum rod suppliers. A secrecy agreement should be of little problem.

Hi Rodrigo,
do you have any specs of the final product you are willing to manufacture (i.e. final diameter and mechanical/electrical properties)?.
Regards,
Martin.

Hello Martin,

Regarding the 6201 aluminum alloy we are thinking about drawing it up to 7 strands 6 AWG (aproximately 1.68 mm in diameter) complying with the mechanical and electrical properties of ASTM B 398. This is the smallest diameter we'll be producing but we are thinking on manufacturing the whole range of AWG gages.

Same thing with the 8000 series aluminum, we want to manufacture the whole range of AWG gages but the smallest diameter we will draw is the 7 strands 12 AWG (aproximately 0.773 mm) complying with the properties of ASTM B 800 Annealed Temper.

Regards,

Rodrigo