C-58 Part 4: Case Studies
gold, nickel, silver, and tin, a process that other wire
manufacturers usually outsourced. The firm had man-
ufacturing operations in Hawthorne, NJ, and Oriskany,
NY. The sales managers for both FAW and FAC were
in Hawthorne, NJ, as well as an overall marketing man-
ager. There was an independent sales representative in
California, and sales offices were located in Bornem,
Belgium, and Shanghai, China.
In the early years, locating quality source material
required its own development work. As Eric Fisk noted:The Achilles’ heel of this business is raw material. If we
can’t get good quality cast rod in here, we can’t make it
better, and a lot of the finished components get gold plat-
ing and other finishes, so precision and quality is an acute
requirement in the raw material. It has to sustain the fin-
ished product requirements.
Solving that problem took years of time working with
suppliers. Their casting integrity was good, but their sub-
sequent processing produced a lot of mechanical damage,
leading to failure sites on the finished product. The prob-
lem ultimately led to our developing what is called heavy
gauge processing capability.
The Wire Production Process
Brian Fisk (VP of engineering and head of production)
described the process for drawing wire:The manufacturing process for copper and copper alloy
wire starts with molten metal flowing into a chilled mold,
solidifying, and then withdrawing as a continuous solid
rod. Next, it is normally “cold-rolled,” where the large rod
is fed between a pair of powered rolls compressing it to a
smaller size, making it longer. Throughout this process, the
material becomes stronger and harder. Some alloys will
become brittle and crack with continued size reduction.
Therefore, periodically throughout the reduction process,
we heat-treat the wire to “anneal,” or soften it.
Further size reduction is done by wire “drawing” using
a drawing “die.” The die is a very hard material such as
tungsten carbide or often synthetic and natural diamonds.
A single wire drawing machine will usually have multiple
dies in sequence (up to thirty or more) with a capstan on
each machine to pull the wire through. Drawing and heat
treating will continue until we reach the final size.
When the desired cross-section of wire is something
other than round, it is processed as a round wire until
it’s close to the finish size. Then, it can either be drawn
through a series of shaped dies, rolled in a rolling mill with
flat or grooved rolls, or rolled using a “turks head.” This is
a device with four rolls for each pass, which is convenient
for square and rectangular shapes. We use grooved rolls for
other shapes. The logo for Fisk Alloy Wire shows the roll
configuration for a common style of turks head for rolling
square wire. (see Exhibit 2 for diagram of wire drawing
process.)Copper Alloys and High
Performance Alloys
Copper has always been known for its high electrical
conductivity, which made it the material of choice for
wire. Commercially, pure copper was easily processed
and readily available as a commodity ore. However,
it was hampered in its functionality by its low tensile
strength and tendency to soften at relatively low tem-
peratures, whereas many high performance wire and
cable applications required higher strength and resis-
tance to softening. To counter the weaknesses of pure
copper, the industry alloyed copper with various materi-
als and today can create an engineered set of properties.
Each additive provides different advantages and disad-
vantages to the resulting alloy. The American Society for
Testing Materials (ASTM) has set standards for various
alloys as electrical conductors such as: cadmium copper,
cadmium chromium copper, tin copper, zirconium cop-
per and beryllium copper.
One of Fisk Alloy’s strengths was its ability to work
with various copper alloys to tailor high performance
alloy products. To be defined as high performance, con-
ductor alloys had to incorporate a variety of character-
istics: electrical conductivity, reliable strength in service,
resistance to softening when exposed to elevated tem-
peratures; flex life to withstand vibration or repeated
bending; a surface conducive to soldering; fabrication
capability to readily allow economic processing; plating
capability (most often nickel, silver or tin) and good
price-to-performance value, in order to be cost effec-
tive in a finished product.^3 Any new alloys required the
development of process technology to assure repeatable
quality output in commercial quantities. Fisk Alloy estab-
lished a working partnership with the Brass Division of
Olin Corporation, which had done metallurgical work
in creating copper alloys of greater strength. After the
alloy (later called Percon) was developed, the technical
issue became how to process the high strength alloy into
wire. Fisk Alloy recognized that developing the process
would increase its alloy offerings and allow it to leverage
its investment in production capacity. The two parties
discussed a joint venture, but Olin decided not to go for-
ward with it. Eric Fisk commented: