Our Core Processes

Cladding:

The bonding under high temperature and pressure of copper to steel is a core competency at Torpedo Specialty Wire. Many other composite materials may be created using this technology as well. Applications for composite wire include lead wire for electronic components, lighting, ground wire and utilities, communications cables, seismic and downhole oil logging cables, and telecommunications. copper clad steel typically yields ten times more cycles than annealed copper.


Drawing:

Torpedo Specialty Wire's arsenal of drawing equipment is capable of reducing copper and steel rods, nonferrous and ferrous alloy rods, and composite material rods, to diameters as fine as 0.007 inch. Highly modified machinery, specialized in the production of copper clad steel conductors, is designed and built in TSW's machine shop, by our machinery development specialists.


Annealing:

Cold drawing our composite materials requires us to return ductility to our wire products. Several technologies permit the stress relieving or annealing to be accomplished by continuous resistive techniques, bulk heat treatment furnaces, or tubular annealing heat treatment. Precisely mixed protective gases are utilized during all heat treatment cycles.


Electroplating:

Our plated coatings will protect conductors from the effects of high temperature, oxidation and intermetallic alloy formation. Torpedo Specialty Wire's nickel plating for example, is available with coating weights of 27% on a weight basis, and can protect an electrical conductor's integrity even during continuous exposure to 450 degrees centigrade, while providing resistance to chemical attack as well. High reliability solderable connections are assured with applications of various compositions of tin and lead solders on electronic component lead wires. These platings are capable of complying with all military and commercial solderability specifications. Torpedo Specialty Wire's Pennsylvania focused nickel plating facility represents one of the world's foremost continuous electroplating plants. Capable of applying heavy nickel coatings to virtually any commercially utilized substrate, it provides ductile platings for many applications. High throughput and ability to plate a range of diverse wire diameters characterize this world-class operation.


Flat Wire Rolling:

Torpedo Specialty Wire's proprietary design precision rolling mills produce only the highest quality miniature flat wire. This machinery features an in-line rolling and annealing technology, which permits tight tolerance production for hard and soft tempered copper and nonferrous alloy flat conductors. Our rolling lines also incorporate a state-of-the-art spooling technology, that supports continuous operation, and permits economic production of matched spool sets, as required in automotive flat cable production. All rolling line processes are constantly monitored by laser gauging systems, which provide real time statistical process data, assuring minimal dimensional variation within our spools, and from lot to lot.