From Fasteners Technology International, August 2014
In the June/July 2014 issue of this magazine, we began this three-part series tracing the origins of cold heading wire and rod. In Part I, we looked at the steel-making process and how the CHQ wire and rod used in North America today mostly starts out as a combination of smelted or processed iron ore and steel sources melted in electric arc furnaces, refined and continuously cast into intermediate steel products known as billets or blooms.
It is from this point that we pick up the process. In this, Part II, of this series, we will explore how these intermediate products are transformed from a long, usually square or rectangular section of steel, to the “round” coiled rod we associate with raw material for cold heading.