Required size | |
You should start with | |
Initial stock | |
This page is only really interesting because it contains a Javascript program. You seem to have Javascript turned off, so it won’t work very well. It only requires first-party scripts; see Privacy for more details.
When you pass round or square wire through flat rolls it gets flatter and longer, but it also gets wider. You can exploit this to make thin wire strip of almost any dimensions, but it’s rather difficult to predict the result. That’s what this calculator does.
You specify the width and thickness of the strip you want, and the program calculates what size round or square wire you should start with. Additionally, if you specify the length of strip you need, it will calculate the length of the input wire.
The chances are that you don’t actually have the required thickness of round or square wire to start with, but you do have some that’s thicker. Just enter the size of the round or square initial stock that you do have and the program will calculate how much of it you need to create the required starting size that you can then roll down to the required thickness of strip.
For best results, roll the strip in as few passes as you can handle. The results aren’t accurate for broad, thin strips. Width-to-thickness ratios of up to 6:1 are known to be good; ratios of 12:1 or more don't work: strips don’t get as wide as predicted by our model. We need to collect more data and construct a better model to handle this case properly.
You can see the detailed equations used for this calculation if you’re interested.
Boxes with light red or white backgrounds are entry boxes for you to type in your requirements; boxes with dark red or grey backgrounds are where the calculator puts its answers. White and grey mean that the box is showing useful information: an input box contains a valid number, for example, and an output box has calculated a correct answer. Red, on the other hand, means that there’s something wrong: either the calculator can’t understand what you’ve typed in an input box, or it’s hit trouble – usually this means that some necessary input is missing.
You specify the width and thickness of the strip you want, and the program calculates what size round or square wire you should start with. Additionally, if you specify the length of strip you need, it will calculate the length of the input wire.
You can use whatever units you like, as long as they are consistent, but you cannot use wire gauges. If you use millimetres, the results will be in millimetres; if you use inches, the results will be in inches. Whatever you use, the results are displayed to only 3 decimal places.
The code which makes this page work is free software. You can browse or download it, modify it, and/or redistribute it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or, at your option, any later version.
If you make interesting changes, I’d be very grateful to know about them. Please mail me patches.
The Javascript machinery on this page was written by Mark Wooding; the text was written by Mark Wooding and Gary Wooding. The data used to derive the computation was provided by Gary Wooding.
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