Comparative Study on the use of Industrial Lubricants for Copper Tube Drawing

Abstract

The aim of this research is to comparative study on the use of industrial lubricants for copper tubedrawing process. Tube drawing operations are carried out using the floating-plug method. Both die andplug materials are tungsten carbide. The die angle and plug angle are 26^o and 22^o, respectively. The tubematerial for this experiment is copper tube (JIS) H3300 C1220. The outer diameter of the tube beforedrawing is 22.24 millimeters having 1.14 millimeters thickness. The reduction ratio of the cross sectionalarea is set to be constant at 38 percent. Two groups of lubricating oil are experimented. First group, fourtypes of commercial oil which is commonly used in tube drawing and forming industry are selected.Second group, four types of mineral base oil having different viscosity are tested. The performance ofeach lubricant is evaluated by the ability to decrease maximum drawing load and to provide better qualityof tube wall surface. The results show that tube surface roughness depended on lubricant viscosity. Thelower the viscosity of lubricant, the better is the surface quality.

Keywords : Tube Drawing / Lubricant / Viscosity / Additives / Surface Roughness