22 May Lubricant Product Advancements within the Copper Wire Drawing Industry
Introducción
Metalube’s Global Technical Services Manager, Emma Pates outlines the key product advancements taking place in the Copper Wire Drawing Industry in our latest technical article presented at Interwire 2025:
Overview of Metalube’s Experience within the Copper Wire Drawing Industry
Metalube has extensive experience within the copper wire drawing industry, gained through decades of collaboration with global manufacturers and operators.
Over time, we have encountered and addressed numerous challenges that are common across the sector, such as improving lubricant performance under extreme conditions, enhancing operational efficiency, and supporting fluid management.
This operational article is shaped by our understanding of these trends and challenges, offering a framework for best practices and strategies to overcome them, ensuring our customers continue to achieve optimal results in their copper wire drawing operations.
The Importance of Lubricants in Copper Wire Drawing
The ever-growing demand in the copper multi-wire drawing industry is the desire for maximum production output without compromising product quality or cleanliness.
This demand has led to wire drawing machines being engineered with increased wire counts and/or operational speeds, which has put a greater strain on the specialist lubricants required to optimise their operation.
Water-misible lubricants (emulsions) play a fundamental role in the copper wire drawing process; without them, copper wire drawing machines would not be able to function due to the excessive friction and wear that would occur between the large number of metal-metal contact areas within the machine.
Despite the varying design philosophies of copper wire drawing machines, which are specific to each manufacturer, they all involve reducing the diameter of a copper rod or wire by pulling it through a series of dies, each with progressively smaller openings. Hence, the principles of operation are consistent and the lubricants used serve the same purposes:
- They lubricate the wire-to-die interface
- They lubricate the wire-to-capstan contact
- They aid with heat dissipation
- Contamination and cleanliness control
If the lubricants used in the industry can fulfill these roles effectively, then downtime is reduced, cleanliness is improved (which reduces amount of maintenance required) and overall, the wire drawing process is both more time and cost efficient.
Key Performance Differentiators of Copper Wire Drawing Lubricants
The modern copper wire drawing process presents unique and demanding challenges for soluble lubricants, especially as wire drawing speeds and wire counts continue to increase within the industry. Three fundamental performance differentiators are highlighted in this study:
Lubricant Longevity
A critical concern, as elevated friction and heat in modern operations accelerate degradation which can result in lubricant overconsumption. Maintaining film strength under operational extremes helps to prevent premature emulsion destabilisation, wear on dies and capstans and increased surface area of copper contamination.
Thermal Stability
Becomes paramount as the heat generated during drawing can exceed the operational limits of conventional lubricants, leading to viscosity loss, oxidation, and reduced performance.
Resistance to Contamination
Contamination control is a persistent challenge, as debris from metal fines and oxidation byproducts can accumulate, impairing lubrication and causing equipment wear and increased risk of wire breakages.
The most dominant and challenging contaminant within copper wire drawing is copper soaps; sticky, residues that can accumulate on dies, wires, and equipment surfaces during wire drawing process.
These deposits result from chemical reactions between the drawing lubricant and copper ions released from the wire surface under high-pressure and high-temperature conditions, with the likelihood of formation increasing as wire count rises due to the greater surface area for potential copper contamination—field photographs referenced in Fig.1. Preventative solutions, achieved through advancements in lubricant formulation, are addressed in detail within this study.
Fig.1 – Images of typical copper soap deposit build-up within the industry using conventional lubricants
A collective review of these performance differentiators positions advanced lubricants as essential components in modern copper wire drawing operations.
Lubricant Advancements within the Copper Wire Drawing Industry
To comprehensively evaluate the performance of current market lubricants within the copper wire drawing industry, a series of laboratory tests was conducted to address critical performance parameters; how these results translate to real world performance as well as drive product development is referenced in Table 1.
Table 1 – An overview of compartive long term copper intake test results for two industrial copper wire drawing products. A product that resists the intake of copper for longer whilst maintaining its emulsion paramaters, is reflective of a higher performing lubricant that can maintain its emulsion stability and fill life for longer in use.
Table 1 highlights compartive copper intake test results for our new product Lubricool™ 955, and an industry standard copper wire drawing emulsion up to 266 days. As copper is introduced into the lubricant, it can lead to the formation of undesirable by-products which impair lubrication properties, increase friction, and increasing risk of wire breakages.
By performing copper intake testing, we can assess how well a lubricant resists copper contamination and copper soap formation over extended periods, ensuring its longevity and effectiveness in reducing operational downtime and maintenance costs.
This testing not only helps to improve the overall performance of the lubricant but also plays a pivotal role in refining formulations to achieve optimal balance between lubrication efficiency, cleanliness, and stability.
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