The Production Process

Depending on the profile characteristics required by the customer, The Rathbone Process combines our in-house tool design and manufacturing capabilities with cold rolling and cold drawing processing to form the customer’s finished profile configuration:

Cold Rolling Process:
The cold rolling process starts with coil or bar feed stock, which is passed through two opposite rotating pre-shaped rolls.  A sequence of multiple roll passes with intermittent anneals can be designed into the process if required to achieve the final profile configuration.
 
Cold Drawing Process:
The cold drawing process also starts with coil or bar feed stock which may be in the initial form of a round, hot extruded, hot rolled, and/or a cold rolled pre-shaped profile.  This stock is then pulled through carbide dies with a shaped concavity designed  to achieve the customer’s final configuration.  As with cold rolling, a sequence of multiple draw passes might be required to achieve the final profile configuration.
 
Bar Straightening, Cut-To-Length, Coiling, and Spooling Process:
After achieving the customer’s final profile and straightness requirements, Rathbone’s manufacturing process enables our customers to receive their profile in various forms, including random mill length bars, exact length bars, non de-burred or de-burred cut to length pieces, sheared to length pieces, catch weight coils, transverse wound coils/spools, or pancake wound spools.