The process of creating oil-tempered wire involves first drawing steel down to a specific diameter, before heating to extremely high temperatures and then rapidly cooling it through immersion in oil. This results in an extremely durable wire, with an excellent fatigue life and resistance to relaxation. Compared to music wire, another popular steel option, oil-tempered wire tends to be both cheaper and thicker – though of course it’s available in a variety of widths.

What, then, are the advantages of this process? And what sort of products might require oil-tempered wire? We’ve rounded up a couple of the major ones below:

Garage Door Springs

The strengthening effect of the oil tempering process makes this wire extremely hardy and gives it high-tensile properties. It’s quite a popular material for springs – especially those that see relatively constant loads, in contrast with ones that are heavily stressed and frequently cycled. This makes oil tempered wire a perfect fit for garage door springs, which support considerable forces for longer periods of time, with fairly infrequent movement.

Automotive Parts

From combustion engine valves to clutches to transmission dampers, the tensile strength and fatigue life of oil-tempered wire allows for springs that satisfy the extreme demands of precision auto parts. Tempering reduces brittleness and ensures more uniform mechanical properties, compared to wires that are simply cold-drawn, meaning that these ultra-important components on which your vehicle’s life (and your safety) depends are extremely resistant to breakage and very slow to wear down.

Wire Forms

These small, typically custom-made wire pieces fit a variety of applications, and are integral components to all sorts of commodities. When choosing a material to construct your forms from, oil-tempered wire is a serious contender. Its sturdy, resilient properties make it a great general-purpose material and a reliable part of any end product.

For more information about oil tempered wire and other steel products, contact Madison Steel today.

Concrete embedded with steel reinforcement bars, plates, or fibers is one of the world’s most commonplace construction materials. Reinforced concrete, as it is known, can be found in everything from massive bridges and skyscrapers to individual home foundations and the roads underneath our feet. Here’s a quick look at why this composite material is so popular, and how it’s made:

Isn’t Concrete Strong Enough? Why Does it Need Reinforcement?

While concrete is an exceptionally tough material, resistant to compression forces, it’s also rather susceptible to cracking under extreme tensile stress. This makes it vulnerable to earthquakes, heavy vibrations, and other calamities against which architects must take consideration.

How Steel Helps

Consider reinforced concrete to combine the best of both worlds: concrete itself, while strong under pressure, is weak when stretched; while steel, somewhat more flexible, withstands bending and pulling forces better. The resulting composite material retains the inexpensive, easily moldable, weather resistant, and fireproof traits of concrete while standing up much more reliably to tensile stress.

How is the Reinforcement Done?

Reinforced steel is most commonly produced by pouring liquid concrete into a mold around a steel rebar or cable skeleton. These steel rods are typically placed at points where the greatest tensile stress is anticipated, if not throughout the entire structure.

Often, construction engineers will create pre-stressed concrete, in which the concrete is poured around heavy steel bars or cables that are already under considerable tensile stress. Once the concrete is poured and hardens, static friction transfers these tensile forces directly into it as compression. Subsequent tensile stress on the concrete is transferred directly onto the reinforcing structure.

Occasionally, small fibers of steel (or even other materials like glass or synthetics) may be incorporated directly into the concrete mix – this results in a material with improved resistance to cracking over regular concrete, though perhaps with less of a strength increase than is found in rebar-embedded concrete.

Questions about rebar or steel-based reinforcement in general? Contact the metal experts at Madison Steel today.