Design evaluation of multiroll mills for small-diameter wire rolling

Abstract

A comprehensive study on the evaluation of mill designs was carried out for three types of multiroll mill for wire rolling by using both prototype mills and numerical experiments. The laboratory experiments were carried out in order to examine both the deformation and loading characteristics of two-, three- and four-roll mills using a set of rolls of the same diameter. As a result, the data allow a direct comparison of the rolling characteristics among the three types of mill, which is not found in previous work. The analytical results showed a good matching with the experimental results, and evaluation was then carried out on the three mills. It has been found that the four-roll mill ensures the highest reduction and the two-roll mill the lowest reduction under the restriction that certain dimensional precision of the rolled wire be maintained. This tendency becomes greater as wire diameter decreases and in practice it is recommended that a four-roll mill equipped with small-diameter rolls be used when rolling small-diameter wire. As regarding the loading characteristics, similar conclusions apply. Finally, domains were determined where four-roll mills show their marked superiority.