Customers often ask about wire forming and Pronto’s process when it comes to making wire products. This post covers our process and issues related to wire forming and wire products.
If a customer has a drawing then our process will begin with that drawing. Sometimes a customer will only have a general idea of what they require or just an understanding of a specific issue that they are trying to address. In that case, our design team will design a custom wire form that seeks to address the issue. Our design team seeks to create a wire product that will provide an elegant solution. This means designing a product that can be manufactured in a cost efficient manner. Many times, we see wire forms that are designed in a way that provide a solution but that result in unnecessary cost for the customer due to an inefficient design.
Once we have a design that we believe will work, the next step is to review it with the customer. We want to make sure that the first physical sample will have a good chance of success. This often requires going over several designs and renderings. Design changes are reviewed, tweaked, and reviewed again. This iterative process is often necessary to reach a design that the customer approves and that will have a high chance of producing wire forms and ultimately a wire product that will address the need. Once we finalize the design, we can move to the next step, which is making a physical sample.
Before we begin forming wire with a new coil of wire, we need to straighten the wire. Wire that is in a coil will have developed some memory. We need to erase that memory. The wire’s memory will be a function of many factors. The specific type of wire, tensile strength, how it was drawn, where it was drawn, even atmospheric conditions, can all affect the imbedded memory of a wire coil. Even within a coil, we see some variations in a coil of wire’s memory and how it behaves. Our state of the art CNC wire bending machines contain feeders and straighteners that are designed to help us with this process. However, our experienced CNC technicians are critical to this process, and indeed to all of the wire forming that we do. See our blog on 3D wire forming here.
The next step for us is to upload the drawing to one of our CNC wire formers. We will typically need to make some adjustments to make sure that the wire form is coming out as shown on the drawing. These adjustments are necessary due to small variations in the tooling, the wire, the CNC software, and other factors.
After we have created the different wire forms, we need to weld them together. We have a variety of different welding options available. See our blog on welding options here.
In addition, we need to add some type of finishing. At Pronto, we have a wide range of metal finishing options. See our blog on metal finishing options here.
Contact us now at [email protected] for more information on your custom wire and metal products!