Argonics’ Urethane Wire Guide Rollers are Engineered for Extended Life

Argonics’ polyurethane products are used in a wide variety of applications and industries. While a large part of our focus is on bulk material handling, concrete and agriculture, we can do so much more.

 

Other industries that we have had success in are microelectronics and photovoltaic industries, where our wire-cutting rollers are used in the creation of silicon waters for processing silicon chips. Our rollers help guide diamond-coated wires to cut the silicon material.

 

Micro Matters magazine featured Argonics’ Technical Sales Engineer in an article about wire guide rollers.

 

“Urethane is the preferred material for both long and short wire cutting rollers,” says Greg Cappaert, Technical Sales Engineer at Argonics, one of the U.S.’s largest producers of wear-resistant urethane products. “Cast urethanes are tough, abrasion-resistant elastic materials that combine many of the performance advantages of high-tech plastics, metals and ceramics along with the resiliency and flexibility of rubber parts.”

 

Because urethane’s properties can be adjusted over wide ranges of hardness, resilience, spring rate and dynamic properties, its versatility offers custom solutions to difficult design challenges.

 

“Urethane, even in relatively small quantity production, can be adapted and tailored to prioritize the physical properties that design engineers need,” says Cappaert.

 

These industries require exacting specifications, and roller failure is a big problem.

 

"Because urethane is an engineered material, many problems can be overcome by adjusting formulation to meet the specific requirements of an application, as well as rigorous testing and stringent quality control of individual parts. He also notes that polyurethane rollers can be engineered to deliver extreme accuracy in both wet and dry operations, such as machined tolerances to +/- 0.004” (+/- 0.10mm).

 

Cappaert characterizes the production of cast urethane rollers as complex and highly sensitive. For that reason, Argonics casts, machines and inspects each individually. When larger urethane-coated rollers are approaching wear limits, these must be stripped and re-coated using the same types of stringent procedures.

 

Although specific customer formulations and design information are considered proprietary, Cappaert says these methodologies can lead to improvements in wafer warp, consistency of cut, and thickness variation while also increasing roller longevity."