Wire drawing machine from Kratos: The successor of the company founded in 1905 merged in the newly founded Herborn+Breitenbach group in 1995.

Photos: Kieselstein

Instead of controlling the drawing capstans through manually operated potentiometers, dancers or rolls the drives of the Rubin are synchronised through an automatic backpull tension control.

Herborn+Breitenbach developed sensor rolls that can be turned away: With this system known as “ASB II” the rolls only control the acceleration and deceleration.

Developed straightforward

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Multiple drawing lines were the main products of the Unna company Breitenbach in the 1950s. Specialised in wire drawing machines the company had been in the market for 90 years at that time. Multiple drawing machines were also produced in other factories, such as the Maschinenfabrik Herborn founded in 1926 and the Drahtziehmaschinen-Werk Grüna in Chemnitz which was founded in 1905 as Kratos. These multiple drawing machines stood out against the traditional single drawing blocks due to a higher productivity. The main challenge was the control of the multiple drawing capstans which were driven by only one motor. The different torques of the drawing capstans were realized through some very difficult, fully mechanic devices that creates excess strain on the wire. By the middle of the 1960s Breitenbach became the leading supplier of direct-current driven straight-line drawing machines in the European market. With these systems, the wire runs through the machine nearly in one line which has meant significant progress for the increase of quality and productivity. Each drawing capstan had its own drive. With the launch of the static frequency-converters of the Univert series by the middle of the 1970s Breitenbach became the market leader for steel wire drawing plants. Here the multiple drives were controlled through direct current, through potentiometers that could be adjusted by the operator. Still today, drawing lines with such drive and control system are sold all over the world. Between the several drafts the wire is touched neither by rolls nor by a dancer.

Only the experience of the operator in combination with an intelligent control concept ensured a continuous operation of the drawing line. The drawing process had to be contantly monitored, therefore Herborn+Breitenbach developed a system with sensor rolls that could control wire tensions between capstans. This system, known as “ASB II”, utilizes sensor rolls which control the acceleration and deceleration and thus automatically controlling the wire tension and drawing process. If the torque of the multiple drawing capstans has to change, due to wear of the drawing die, the system regulates automatically via sensor rolls, at frequent intervals, which collect the current data and transfer it to the electronic control system. The sensor roll technology controls the wire tension continuously during the operation of the line.
After Breitenbach and Maschinenfabrik Herborn had merged under the world-wide known brand Herborn+Breitenbach, the successor of the Chemnitz company Kratos, Drahtzieh-Maschinenwerk Grüna became the leading company in the Herborn+Breitenbach group founded in 1995. 3 producers of wire drawing machines wire united in one cooperation resulting in a new generation of straight line drawing machines, type Rubin that were presented for the first time at the wire 1998 in Duesseldorf. The drive and control technology was based on the programmable logic controller Simatic and the drive control Simovert by Siemens. That was the third generation of Breitenbach’s concept in the wire industry known as “automatic setting of backpull tension” (ASB).
Instead of the previous control of the several capstans through manually operated potentiometers, dancers or sensor rolls, thus drives of the wire drawing machine Rubin were synchronised through an automatic backpull tension control without any dancer. To ensure a constant tension at the drawing dies, previous wire drawing machines used lever-guided pulleys, the so-called sensor rolls, that enabled an equalisation of the wire tension and the lengthening between the drawing dies. The change of the drawing direction via the dancer can have a negative effect on the quality of the wire.
After Stephan Kieselstein, the former Head of Engineering of the Herborn+Breitenbach group, had founded his own company and had taken over the products and brand rights of the named companies into the new Kieselstein GmbH, the development of the straight-line drawing machines has been advanced consequently.