Abstract
The copper clad steel wire is used extensively as lead wires of electronic components such as capacitors, diodes and glass sealing lamp because the wire combines the strength and low thermal expansion characteristic of Fe-Ni steel with the conductivity and corrosion resistance of copper. In order to fabricate the copper clad steel wire, several processes including electro-plating, tubecladding extrusion process and dip forming process have been introduced and applied. The electroplating process for the production of copper clad steel wire shows poor productivity and induces environmental load generation such as electroplating solution. The dip forming process is suitable to mass production of copper clad steel such as trolley wire. and need expensive manufacturing facilities. The present paper describes the improvement of the conventional continuous casting process to fabricate copper clad steel wire, which its core metal is low thermal expansion Fe-Ni alloy and its sheath material is copper. In particular, the formation of intermetallic compound at interface between core and sheath was investigated in order to introduce optimum continuous casting process parameter for fabrication of copper clad steel wire with higher electrical conductivity. The mechanical strength of copper clad steel wire was also investigated through wiredrawing process with of 95% in total reduction ratio.
