Jophn Neale enhances polymer lubricants

John Neale has enhanced its Superdraw ST-P polymer lubricants for severe stainless and alloy tube drawing.

A specialist tube drawing company in the West Midlands has worked with John Neale to overcome difficult process problems when drawing difficult stainless steel alloys with a reduction of up to 50 per cent.

Superdraw ST-P technology made the draw possible but the die still got extremely hot with subsequent lubricant breakdown and failure always a possibility.

A systematic search for all possible additives that could give a step up in performance was undertaken and advice was sort from specialist international additive suppliers.

Samples were received and tested in the lab to select the most promising.

These candidates were then selected for production tests.

The benefit of working with a specialist tube drawing company was that small samples of several fluids were able to be tested quickly to indicate whether a performance benefit was achieved.

Several of the additives showed no benefits, with some even showing adverse effects on lubrication with pick-up being observed after only a couple of draws.

However, one additive did show performance enhancements on a short run of six tubes; this was not enough to be sure of the performance benefit, but it was encouraging.

The company prepared enough products to allow for a longer test run.

The following week this fluid was tested on a full run of 300 tubes and the lubricity enhancement gained by the use of the new additive was very clear.

The operating temperature of the die was significantly less and the tubes were much cooler, which indicated superior lubricity.

No pick up was encountered during the whole batch.

This technology will be sold under the Superdraw ST-SE label with different viscosities being available for different applications.

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