[Jewelry making - Article 00938] - [Orchid] Drawing wire, getting burrs

[Trevor F]

========[ Invite a Friend - http://www.ganoksin.com/invite.htm  ]========

    I've rolled and drawn a lot of my own small gauge wire before and
    had no problems. Recently though I've had the need to do some heavy
    gauge round sterling wire and am running into an interesting problem.
    Any suggestions would be most welcome. 

    So, I'm starting with 5mm square silver rod and want 2.5 mm round
    wire. I do the usual progressive roll-down on the mill to get say a
    2.6+ mm square wire and then take that over to the draw bench. The
    problem is that as the square wire is rounded off on it's way through
    the round wire plates I get these wicked burrs. The wire comes out of
    my mill as the usual square with the corners knocked off so each of
    those square edge gets rolled over by the drawplate to produce a
    burr, so that's no less than 8 full-length burrs per length of wire
    drawn! 

    Of course you need to cut these burrs off before you proceed very
    far in the drawing process and that takes a lot of time, at least
    doing it by hand the way I have been. 

    In case anyone is wondering let me be clear: this is not a defect in
    the drawing plates (I've tried several different plates, some steel,
    some carbide). And it's not a problem with burrs pre-existing on the
    milled wire (I've checked, several times). 

    I've tried repeated thorough annealings (much more than the wire
    itself really calls for), different lubricants (motor oil, wax, soapy
    water), larger and smaller draw-down steps, etc and nothing seems to
    have much affect. Lots of burrs, lots of nasty work slow-downs and
    I'm not a happy camper. 

    So, what's the trick here? What am I missing? I've tried consulting
    the reference books... nothing. I've tried searching here at Orchid
    ... the same. So I plug on trimming off those long, nasty burs but I
    do find myself wishing over and over that there was a better way. 

    As I said, all suggestions welcome. 

Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light
Visit TouchMetal.com at http://www.touchmetal.com
____________________________________________________________________
T h e   O r c h i d   L i s t
Open Electronic Forum for Jewelry Manufacturing Methods and Procedures
____________________________________________________________________
Orchid FAQ:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/faq.htm
Orchid Archives:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/archive
Orchid Galleries:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/gallery.htm
Invite a Friend:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/invite.htm
____________________________________________________________________
Tips From The Jeweler's Bench - Article Archive
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/tip_sear.htm
The Jeweler's Selected Bibliography List
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/jewelry-books
Buy Orchid Jewelry:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/shop
____________________________________________________________________
-Unsubscribe:
-Email: orchid-request AT ganoksin.com Body=unsubscribe subject=blank
____________________________________________________________________