Claims
- 1. Apparatus for heat treating a single continuously moving metal wire in a heat-treatment area, comprising
- first and second shafts parallel to each other,
- first and second pluralities of discs mounted on said first and second shafts respectively, each disc of said first plurality of discs facing against a corresponding disc of said second plurality of discs, each of said discs having wire-guide grooves thereon, said grooves being arranged for winding a single wire in a helical manner about successive grooves of successive discs of said first and second pluralities while alternating between said grooves of said first and second pluralities,
- said first shaft being a drive shaft,
- said second shaft being driven in the same direction as said first shaft,
- said first plurality of discs including a first disc being driven by said first shaft, the remainder of said first and second pluralities of discs being freely rotatable on said first and second shafts, and
- means for supplying a single wire to said discs.
- 2. Apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a disc mounted on said second shaft for rotation therewith.
- 3. Apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said discs of at least one of said first and second pluralities of discs have increasing diameters.
- 4. Apparatus according to claim 1 further comprising a disc mounted on said second shaft for rotation therewith, and a torque dependent slip clutch interconnecting said first and second shafts.
- 5. Apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising third and fourth pluralities of discs mounted on said first and second shafts respectively, said third plurality of discs being interdigitated with said first plurality of discs, and said fourth plurality of discs being interdigitated with said second plurality of discs, and means for winding a single wire around said first and second pluralities of discs in a first direction relative to said first and second shafts, and for winding said single wire around said third and fourth pluralities of discs in an opposite direction relative to said first and second shafts.
- 6. Apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a third shaft parallel to said first and second shafts, and a third plurality of discs mounted on said third shaft, said first, second, and third shafts being disposed in a triangular arrangement, said apparatus further comprising a hood enclosing said first, second and third pluralities of discs, and heating bodies mounted on inner walls of said hood.
- 7. Apparatus according to claim 1, wherein each of said discs comprises a wheel having spokes, said wheel having a wheel rim which includes said wire-guide grooves, said spokes being formed as cooling vanes.
- 8. Apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said discs have hubs, said hubs being connected to bushes made from a refractory material, said bushes being mounted on said shafts.
- 9. Apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising guide discs made from a refractory material and arranged between said pluralities of discs.
- 10. Apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a rotary plate wherein said first and second shafts are mounted, said rotary plate being mounted for rotation about an axis lying centrally between said first and second shafts, said apparatus further comprising means for transversely displacing a wire-feed device as a function of the rotation of said rotary plate.
- 11. Apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a housing enclosing said first and second pluralities of discs, said housing having radiating heating surfaces arranged parallel to the common outer tangential planes of said first and second pluralities of discs.
- 12. Apparatus according to claim 11, further comprising a radiation screen wall located between said radiating heat surfaces and said common outer tangential planes of said first and second pluralities of discs.
- 13. Apparatus according to claim 10, wherein said housing comprises a fixed part and a hood part, said fixed part supporting a bearing arrangement for said rotary plate, said hood part being removably connected to said fixed part.
- 14. Apparatus according to claim 13, wherein said removable hood part includes arresting means for locking the rotation of said rotary plate when said housing is closed.
Priority Claims (1)
| Number |
Date |
Country |
Kind |
| 35/87 |
Jan 1987 |
ATX |
|
Parent Case Info
This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 135,342, filed Dec. 21, 1987, now abandoned.
The invention relates to an apparatus for heat treating a continuously moving metal wire while using rotational bodies which are arranged in the heat-treatment area and around which the wire winds several times.
Reference is had to the application Ser. No. 99,066 filed on Sep. 21, 1987 by Gerhard Ritter and Klaus Ritter, both being among the joint inventors of the instant application; and both said applications are assigned to the same assignee.
Apparatuses of this generic type, in a spacesaving type of construction, permit a relatively long dwell time of the wire in the heat-treatment zone. When the wire is continuously drawn off from the run-off end of a rotational body around which the wire winds, the wire should bear as uniformly as possible against the periphery of the rotational body to avoid any arbitrary displacement of the turns and to ensure a distributed static friction for the wire feed. Since the wire lengthens during heating as a result of the thermal expansion, in order to achieve close contact with the surface of a cylindrical rotational body, it must slide with friction on this surface, as a result of which the requisite tensile force on the wire increases correspondingly.
Moreover, when the wire is in close contact with the rotational body, a problem arises during interruptions in operation irrespective of their cause. One cause of an interruption in operation can be that the wire becomes tangled when being drawn off from a reel. In the case of an interruption during wire annealing, the wire section remaining in the heat treatment zone is heated so long that it is practically burnt out and thus becomes useless, with the additional risk that the wire contracts again during possible cooling, as a result of the resistance of the rigid rotational body, and is subjected to such high tensile stresses that it tears. This tearing risk also exists in an interruption in operation during a cooling treatment of a wire wound closely around a rigid rotational body.
The object of the invention, in a heat-treatment apparatus of the generic type specified at the beginning, is therefore to remove the risk of over-stressing the wire held in contact with the rotational bodies and in particular to remove the risk of tearing in the event of an interruption in operation which is deliberate or is forced by a fault.
This object is achieved according to the invention by means of disc-shaped rotational bodies, which at the periphery have self-contained wire-guide grooves, and which are arranged in sequence along at least two parallel geometric axes, with all discs along one axis being faced by allocated discs along another axis with axially offset wire-guide grooves, and wherein the first disc of one of the disc rows is connected non-rotationally to a drive shaft on which the remaining discs of the same disc row are rotatably mounted, whereas the discs of the other disc row(s) are either all rotatably mounted on, in each case, a fixed axle or on a towed shaft or else are rotatably mounted on, in each case, a shaft which is driven in the same direction as the first-mentioned drive shaft and to which a disc of the other relevant disc row is, if necessary, connected non-rotationally.
In this way, as explained in greater detail later with reference to exemplary embodiments, the disc-shaped rotational bodies arranged in sequence along parallel axes form a system around which the turns of the wire wind and in which the entire length of the wire section winding around the system, as a result of the expansion or contraction of the wire, can change both in normal operation and in the event of a fault without the wire in the wound areas having to slide with friction on the surface of the disc-shaped rotational bodies, since the individual disc-shaped rotational bodies can turn relative to one another with relatively slight bearing friction.
For brevity, the disc-shaped rotational bodies are designated hereinafter as "discs"; arranging such discs in sequence results in a combined drum-like rotational body. The apparatus according to the invention contains at least two of such combined drum-like rotational bodies. The wire is fed via the driven first disc of a first disc row; the wire can be drawn off from the apparatus by draw-off means arranged outside the apparatus or by the last disc of the last disc row being connected non-rotationally to a driven shaft. The requisite relative rotations between the individual discs of a disc row, in the event of heating or cooling of the wire winding around them, can be reduced if the diameters of the discs increase along the disc rows in relation to the thermal expansion of the wire to be expected along the disc rows, the intention being for this increase to preferably take place over-proportionally so that each disc exerts a slight tensile effect on the adjoining wire.
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Feb 1977 |
BEX |
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Continuations (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
| Parent |
135342 |
Dec 1987 |
|
Patent Grant
4919395
