Analysis and design of profiled dies for polymer wire die drawing process

Abstract

A coupled thermomechanical finite element model has been developed to study the detailed temperature, strain and strain rate distributions in conical and profiled die designs and their effect on important processing parameters such as draw load and speed. The performance of conical and profile die designs has also been compared experimentally under identical drawing conditions for the specific case of die drawing of polyoxymethylene wire. Both the analytical and experimental results demonstrate the ability of the profile die designs to significantly increase the processing speed whilst retaining the high degree of orientation and enhanced properties of the die drawn product.