Industrial furnaces are crucial for wire annealing, a heat treatment process used to soften metal wires, improve their ductility, and relieve internal stresses caused by cold working (such as drawing, rolling, or extrusion). Annealing enhances the wire’s workability, making it easier to bend, form, or draw into finer wires without breaking.
Key Features of Industrial Furnaces in Wire Annealing
Purpose of Wire Annealing:
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- Softening the wire: Wire annealing restores the ductility of the metal after it has been hardened during the drawing or manufacturing process. This makes the wire more flexible and suitable for further processing or end-use.
- Relieving internal stresses: During wire drawing, significant stress is introduced into the material. Annealing in industrial furnaces helps eliminate these stresses, preventing cracks or breaks during further processing.
- Enhancing electrical properties: For certain applications, especially in electrical wires (copper or aluminum), annealing can improve conductivity by refining the metal’s microstructure.
FEATURES OF WIRE ANNEALING FURNACES
Abbott Furnace Company’s annealing furnaces provide improved control over time and temperature relations to achieve desired properties in such areas as machinability, cold work (process annealing or in-process annealing), dimensional stability, as well as electrical and mechanical properties. This can be applied to ferrous and nonferrous alloys alike. These furnaces are used to heat materials at very high temperatures to change their hardness and strength properties.
Annealing is commonly associated with the manufacture of steel, to relieve internal stresses that may lead to failure in service and to produce a more uniform, or homogeneous, internal structure. This process is also commonly used with various metals, glass, and other materials to make them less brittle and more workable.
Abbott Furnace can supply annealing furnaces for practically any annealing operation including final, full, intermediate, partial, and recrystallization annealing, in varying time and temperature ranges.
Abbott Furnace maintains the intellectual property and exclusive North American rights for the manufacture of Drever continuous annealing furnaces and bright annealing furnaces for steel and stainless-steel strip.
Special Muffle Design
Abbott can supply wire annealing furnaces to process up to 32 individual lanes are offered as standard and additional lanes can be added in custom applications.
Gas or Electric Heating
Abbott Furnace Company offers both types of furnace heating, depending on your needs.
Individual atmosphere control in each lane.
Monitoring & Control
We offer computerized monitoring and control systems that may supervise several different functions including furnace temperature, atmosphere flow, dew point, oxygen content, carbon control, belt speed, etc.
Abbott utilizes a variety of systems to perform these functions.
