Adjustable drawing dies are dies inside of which there are adjustable components that allow you to create drawn products with different profiles, such as rectangular, square and in some cases even hexagonal and octagonal.
A bit of history:
Adjustable drawing dies were introduced to the mechanical industry market in order to produce any required flat drawn geometric profile. The primary need was to have a tool capable of satisfying any combination of thickness and of width. Adjustable drawing dies were necessary to cope with the absence of predefined regulatory standards.
Following the continuous need to increase production performance in terms of yield, even the adjustable drawing dies have been subject to constant evolution in terms of technological innovation, adapting their efficiency to new production needs.
Applications:
Currently the fields of application of adjustable drawing dies are mainly: the drawing of ferrous flat bars such as construction steels or stainless steels and the drawing of non-ferrous materials such as copper, aluminum and their alloys. They are also widely used in the drawing of precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium.
SCLEROS’ project:
The standard configuration of a Scleros Adjustable Drawing Die includes an external high-strength tempered steel frame called „armature„. It is the housing and fixing element to the drawing bench and which acts as a tool holder. Inside there are adjustment elements for the blocks or the abutments and saddles.
Scleros primarily produces two types of adjustable drawing dies:
1) Blocks
The dies that can be split into blocks are mostly used by companies that produce market demanded drawn products of varying sizes.
The four blocks inside the dies are operator adjustable and are blocked through wedges, shims and grinds. They have a parallelepiped shape and two rays, one convex on the longer end and one concave on the shorter end. The concave radius of the first block fits perfectly with the convex radius of the second and the same happens for the second with the third. The fourth block rejoins the first in the same way, closing the geometry. The section they form, suitably spaced from each other, represents the drawn component that will be produced.
Both tungsten carbide integral and hardened steel with a brazed carbide insert blocks are available.
2) With saddles:
The split dies with saddles are used to draw flat bars in which the ratio between the width is many times greater than the thickness.
They consist of two abutments and two saddles. The abutments are elements similar to blocks, they also made of steel with a tungsten carbide brazed insert or of integral carbide. However, unlike blocks they have only one radius- the convex one on the longest end. Saddles, on the other hand, are produced entirely in hard metal and have three spokes, two concave and one convex. The concave radii of the saddles are coupled with the convex radii of the two shoulders. By closing the system in this way, it is possible to form in the case of the modular block, the geometry of the desired flat drawn section.
Compared to dies with blocks, adjustable drawing dies with saddles have the advantage of being more quickly prepared, since one of the two dimensions of the drawn product is due to that of the two saddles which, coupled to the shoulders, define its thickness. However compared to those with blocks, they are less adjustable since in order to achieve varying drawn product thicknesses it is necessary to have different pairs of saddles.
Scleros also manufactures adjustable drawing dies capable of producing drawn bars with special profiles such as hexagonal or octagonal section and the dimensions differing according to client’s needs.
The advantages of using a Scleros Adjustable Drawing Die:
PRECISION:
- geometric profile with certified centesimal tolerances;
- possibility of drawing flat bars with „sharp edge“ profiles;
FLEXIBILITY: a wide range of dimensions and profiles of the flat bar to be drawn;
FAST PRODUCTION: design and manufacturing assisted by innovative CAD-CAM systems that facilitate the execution of the agreed project.
