The engineering application of the electroplastic effect in the cold-drawing of stainless steel wire

The application of electroplastic processing technology to the cold-drawing of steel wires was investigated. It is shown that the drawing stress was decreased by about 20–50% with the application of electric current pulses. The plasticity of the material had been significantly improved concurrently. With the application of electric current pulses, not only can a better surface quality of the wire be gained but also the wire can be drawn from its original diameter of 1.6 mm to a diameter of 0.40 mm, with good surface quality of the wire, without any annealing treatment. The mechanism of the electroplastic effect (EPE) can be explained as being that with the introduction of the current pulses, the dislocations in the materials can been de-pinned and distributed homogeneously. Thus, the strain in the crystals is decreased and the formation of the strain-induced martensite is delayed.