The Optimization Wire Drawing Die Design for Aluminum A1050 and A1070

Abstract

Wire drawing is a common used process to reduce the diameter of a small rod or a wire. The parameters of drawing die design such as die angle, bearing length, entrance fillet, and the drawing ratio of each pass are crucial to control the quality of a drawn wire. Taguchi method was adopted to optimize the drawing die geometry design. The lubrication conditions were taken into consideration to observe the effect of friction on the dimension accuracy of the drawn wires. The optimum combination of the drawing die design using 20% of reduction ratio is semi die angle 9 degrees, bearing length 1.2mm and entrance fillet 0.4mm. Two types of aluminum alloy 1070 and 1050 were tested using lubricants sodium sulfide (Na2S), graphite, and drawing oil, respectively. The lubrication effect of sodium sulfide is the best to achieve the lowest drawing load. The lubricant Na2S had the best performance in terms of lowest maximum drawing force for both of A1050 and A1070. The final diameters of the drawn wires were very close to the specification 4.0 mm. The CAE simulations were able to find the optimum design of die. The designed drawing machine was capable of carrying out the experiments and obtains consistent results.