• Introduce the domestic development history of copper clad steel wire conductor
• Describe the main technological innovation points of several copper-clad steel production processes in China
• Analyzed the differences in domestic copper-clad steel wire production and development quality, process level and production cost
• The market’s new demand for copper-clad steel wire and the route of developing new technology

What is copper-clad steel bimetal composite conductor?

Copper with high conductivity is uniformly, densely and continuously coated on the surface of high-strength steel wire.

Form a tight physical or metallurgical bond.

Since the 1950s.

Various industrial countries in the world have carried out research, development and application of bimetallic composite wire production.

They took advantage of the differences between two different metals to create wires with better performance than single metal wires.

These countries have successfully developed copper-clad steel wire rods one after another.

After many innovations in process equipment, the quality of copper-clad steel wire has reached a very high level.

As a functional material, copper-clad steel wire has shown outstanding technical or economic advantages in the fields of power transmission, communication, aerospace, automobile and electronics.

1.Copper-clad steel industry development history

Mainly divided into three stages:

The first stage:

Produced by casting and rolling process.

This is the earliest copper-clad steel production process in China, using the technology of the former Soviet Union.

In this process, install the steel rod in the mold, and the copper liquid is cast outside to form a copper-clad billet ingot of tens of kilograms.

Then hot rolling, cleaning, wire drawing, and annealing can produce double zero-grade copper-clad steel wire.

The process was discontinued in 1990.

The reasons are:

Firstly, use a small mold for casting.

Secondly, the material utilization rate is low.

Thirdly, limited the product length.

Fourthly, the cost is high.

The second stage:

Electroplating process production.

That is to use the electroplating process of the working principle of the electrolytic battery to “dissolve” the block copper plate as the anode.

Guide to the steel wire covering the cathode to form a copper layer coating.

To sum up, the advantages of electroplated copper-clad steel wire are:

1. Use traditional craft equipment.
2. The production site occupies a small area.
3. Low electrical conductivity.
4. The coating is thin.

To sum up, its disadvantages are:

1. Poor product performance.
2. The coating layer is uneven in thickness.
3. The copper layer is easy to peel off
4. The electroplating waste liquid produced in the production process causes serious environmental pollution.

The third stage:

At this stage, the three processes of electroplating, cladding and horizontal continuous casting share the market.

Before the development of copper-clad steel cladding method in China, copper-clad steel wires from American Copperweld were imported in China.

But in 2003, after the domestic cladding method was put into production, the copper clad steel we made:

Not only the price is lower than American Copperweld, but also the quality and performance are the same.