Roll Forming is widely used in the wire industry. There are Roll Formed Flat, Round and Shaped Wire Parts and regular Roll Formed Sections made to be Welded, attached to wire, or used with or as wire in other ways. Roll Formed Flat, Round and Shaped Wire can be more economical with roll forming due to inline fabricating using modern cutoff and prepunch press, die Accelerators and die Boosts. It does not take the place of wire forming that bends wire into shapes with 4-Slide and Stamping operations. Only when Round, Flat, Square & Shaped Wire is in Straight Length and Ring form can Roll forming become a better alternative. Roll Formed Wire parts and Sections used with Wire, come in 4 categories:
Flat Wire & Flat Wire Substitutes:The first category is flat wire that is Edge Conditioned, Straightened, and Cut to finished lengths, or bent into Rings, inline. Prefinished Flat wire without edge conditioning can be straightened and Cut to finished lengths also. Other inline fabricating can also be performed, such as: Holes, Slots, End Fabricating, Tabs, Staking, Ring Bending, Welding Beads and Dimples, Embossing, Grooves, Identification Stamps, Shear Forms, Etc.. Thicknesses of this style of Flat Wire can be up to .187" thick. A different method of producing Roll Formed Flat Wire is by using a prefinished sheet metal material from coil stock that can be folded on itself, two or three times. This forming gives the Flat Wire Substitute: extra strength through Work Hardening, Rounded edges, Prefinishing, and is easier to Straighten. This process can be less expensive than regular, post finished wire, especially when other inline press fabricating is called for. Inline cutoff press fabrications are the same as described earlier for regular flat wire. Cutoff Dies may also have Gag Punching and Notching to accomplish all inline fabricating needed in one die. A regular, solid flat wire or substitute can be fabricated inline with a prepunch and cutoff die. Tooling for a two fold Substitute Flat Wire will be less costly than a three fold when tooling is not already existing. Many years ago we were the first to design a three fold style in order to use a less expensive Prefinished Metal thickness for a File Hanging Rail. This accomplished the same result as a single or double thickness. An example of a three fold Flat Wire Substitute can be seen in our print example link. Thicknesses of two and three fold Substitute Flat Wire can be up to.125" thick. These substitutes can also be bent into Rings.
Shaped Wire:Shaped Wire is our third category. All the things said above about Round and Square wire can be the same for Shaped Wire. Shaped wire can be for other standard shapes of wire other than round, square or flat, such as Hexagonal, for example. Special, Non-Standard, Shaped Wire is different in that it can be formed in two styles. The first is for Wire that can be changed from its original form into a different shape by pressure of the top roll onto the bottom roll in the roll forming machine. For example a Round Wire can be rolled into an Oval Wire, or a Square Wire can be formed into a shape with more than 4 sides, etc.. These can then be fabricated inline into straight and ring form just as flat, round and square wire. Thicknesses and sizes are limited as our largest Roll Forming machine has 2.50" shafts. Since Prefinishing, in this case, is usually not an option, Post-finishing can then be provided. Special Equipment can be obtained for thicker or larger sizes with high volume. The second style of Shaped Wire is when Flat Wire is used to produce a shape such as an Angle, Channel, Zee, or other Profile, without putting pressure on all of the Flat Wire at once. It is Roll Forming Flat wire into the same type of Profiles that is normally done with Sheet metal. These, of course are smaller profiles than produced regularly as Roll Formed Profiles and this process is not used as often, since sheet stock can be less expensive than flat wire and our thickness capability is the same for Flat Wire as it is for Sheet Metal.
Our 4th and final category is not for wire at all. It is for Roll Formed Sections that go in Welded Wire assemblies or are used with wire in other ways. Any Roll Formed Section can be used in Welded Wire assemblies. Wire can be welded to the Roll Formed parts easily. For Spot Welding, features can be placed into the Roll Formed Parts for better welds. These features are produced inline, during forming, by the roll dies or the cutoff and/or prepunch dies. The features that can be added are: Weld Beads, which are grooves for spot welding, that run along the length of the part, or are at the ends only. Welding Dimples, which are small depressions for spot welding, that are placed intermittently down the length or are at the ends only. Roll Formed parts like Open Seam and Lock Seam Tubing and other profiles are also used frequently with wire parts in other than welded wire assemblies. For example our Open Seam Tubing May be used as a guide for all types of stranded wire or wire rope to ride and move in or as a support. Lock Seam Tubing can be made to have a teardrop style groove that allows for a wire to fit inside, all along the length. For example, Some Shade Roller Tubes have this teardrop style to place wire in after shade material has been inserted to hold the shade material securely in place. Wire can also be placed into a Roll Formed Section, Inline, during Roll Forming for all types of Sections. Holding, supporting and substituting electrical wire is another very common use for Roll Formed Sections. Products that do this are: DIN Rails, Wireways, Wire Duct, Bus Duct, Cable Trays, and Brackets. Busbars can be Roll Formed Profiles that are similarly shaped to solid, Shaped Wire Busbars, but made of thinner, less expensive conductive metal. There are an infinite number of uses, that Roll Formed Sections can be used, with and instead of Wire. For more information about regular Roll Formed Sections please go to the link in our site that best describes the type of part you’re interested in.
