Technical Help
Why wire breakage may occur in cold weather.
In a few circumstances an increase in the frequency of wire breaks may occur in cold weather when baling materials with excessive memory.
We have been asked if the black annealed wire properties change as the temperature decreases during the winter. One customer even asked us if we had any "winter wire" instead of "summer wire".
The answer to this problem lies not with a change in the properties of the wire as it gets colder, but in an increase in the memory or retained pressure in the baled product. As the temperature gets colder more pressure is required to compress the product being baled, and this results in more memory in the bale. This, in turn, puts more pressre on the baling wire after the bale has been ejected from the chamber. This problem is particularly relevent in the baling of plastic, e.g. plasctic milk jugs and soda bottles.
The following suggestions should help to reduce this problem:
- Make sure that the correct wire size is being used and the wire has been FULLY annealed with at least 25% elongation. This high elongation will allow the bale to expand slightly without the wire breaking. (For additional information on the need for high elongation in wire see Technical Help #1.)
- Try to schedule the baling of high memory materials later in the day when the temperature normally warms up.
- Reduce the bale length by a few inches to lower the bale pressure.
- Use a heavier gauge FULLY annealed wire, for example 9.5 gauge instead of 10 gauge.
- Check to see that the pulleys in the wire feeding system to the baler are not binding because of the cold weather causing the automatic tier to make poorly tied knots.
Finally, if the problems still exists, send us a couple of 10" long wire samples showing the wire breaks for our free metallurgical evaluation. We will report back to you with our findings within a few days.
