Round Wire, Flat Wire & Shaped Wire

Our key processes, starting with drawn wire supplied on spools, are wire straightening, wire cutting, wire forming, and rolling wire to flatten it.

Standard Wire and Rod sizes and types are available in our Component shop

Shaped wire is drawn through a die, including shaped wire drawn from stainless steel and grade 9 titanium.

Secondary processes include wire coiling and laser welding wire as part of a laser welded assembly. Continuous coils are wound from round or flat wire.

Materials

Our raw materials are sourced from reliable, long term partners and are accompanied by certification of chemical and mechanical properties.

Wire Facts And Figures:

Outside diameters supplied from .003” to 1.20”

Specific types of wire product supplied are as follows:

Flat Wire

The two methods of manufacture are firstly by flattening round drawn wire, which gives rounded corners and edges to the flat wire, or secondly by slitting the flat wire from metal foil.

Slitting offers the opportunity for higher width to thickness ratios for the final flat wire. Flat wire can be coiled into spiral coils or microcoils.

Fine gauge stainless steel strip, down to 25 microns thick, can be slit into 1mm – 5mm wide deburred widths.

Drawn Shaped Wire

We manufacture wire products drawn in “shapes” or “sections”, as small as 0.2mm diameter and as large as 12mm diameter.

Star-shaped wire is used for e.g gears, whilst “channel” sections are used for medical catheter mandrel tools whereby the channel is used to mold Pebax or similar polymer which eventually houses a lumen.

Wire Pieces

Straight, cut wire pieces – main products are mandrels, pins, guide wires, probes, shafts, activators. After straightening and cutting, we can centreless grind pins and wire pieces as long as 3 metres to confer exceptional surface quality and diameter tolerances to +/- 2 microns.

Tapers, steps, and D-sections can be ground along the wire length. Sliding head machining of straight ground rods produces highly accurate shafts, pins, activator rods, EDM electrodes and other components for medical devices, activator systems and other specialist mechanical applications.

Wire Forms

Numerous applications for formed wires in the medical device industry as clips, mandrels, hooks, circlips and pull-wires for catheter systems.

Nitinol wires can be “shape-set” by thermal treatment to a specific configuration.

Coils, Continuous Micro-Coils

These are used for their flexibility both as springs and as flexible conduit within the medical device industry. Guide wires come in two basic configurations – solid stainless steel or nitinol core wires and solid core wire wrapped in a coil or braid. Braided or coiled wires offer more flexibility, can be pushed and are kink-resistant.

Garter springs and other micro-springs are supplied. Micro-coils made from flat wire are supplied to provide thin wall and additional flexibility or rigidity depending on customer requirements. Catheter delivery systems require additional rigidity which is conferred by coiled wire. The use of braided wire is an alternative. Stranded fine wires are also supplied.

Laser Welded Wire Forms and Laser Welded Coils

Overlapping wires which are part of a formed wire component can be laser welded in order to induce extra rigidity and improve tolerances in making a finished part.

Laser welded joins between coils can be used to induce additional rigidity, specifically in the region of the laser join.

Grooved Mandrels

As an alternative to die-drawing a wire or rod along its total length, we can machine one or more narrow grooves along part of the rod.

This provides additional leeway in design of catheter delivery systems.

Applications

A summary of main applications for our wire and rod is as follows:

Mandrels, packaging mandrels, guide wires.
Orthodontic, probes, shape setting, pull-wires
Continuous coils – flexible delivery systems, electrodes, springs, micro-springs, filaments
Stranded Wire – flexible yet strong conduction
Nitinol – activators, sensors, heating elements
Tungsten, Molybdenum, Platinum – as electrodes and for radiopaque markers
EDM wires
Centreless ground rods – for sliding head feedstock
Pins & Shafts – motors and rotary instruments