Compliant lubes for copper tubes

Leader in the mechanical wire drawing market, Condat has earned an international reputation for supplying lubricants with added value to the industry.  For the tube industry, CONDAT has recently developed drawing lubricants dedicated to copper tubes used in air conditioning and refrigeration service. New products to be discovered on Tube Düsseldorf.

Refrigeration tubes imply strong lubrication requirements

Copper tubes for air conditioning and refrigeration service must usually comply with various standards such as ASTM B280, EN 12735 and NBR 14665. In order to draw the tubes, an oil based product is often used for the lubrication between the tube and internal mandrel or plug. According to the fore-mentioned standards, the lubricant residues must be very low. Additionally, some systems’ manufacturers request the residues to be compatible with refrigeration gas such as R134-a.

Reducing the drawing residues often means drawing with a thinner lubricant layer between the tube surface and the tooling. A high-performance lubricant is therefore required to avoid contact between the surfaces even at high speed. The various drawing steps impose a large range of viscosities to cover the different dimensions, deformation ratios and speeds.

Compatibility of the lubricant residues with R134-a gas leads to high technological constraints for which a reliable knowledge and control of the product’s raw materials (oil, ester, additives…) is required.

CONDAT lubricant solutions

Condat R&D experts have developed lubricants dedicated to drawing copper tubes intended for air conditioning and refrigeration service. They have formulated these high-performance lubricants in order to reduce the amount of internal residues while offering the required lubrication level. They defined the formula, the raw materials and the production methods to ensure the lubricants are R134-a compatible.

These lubricants are already available under the larger CONDATUB TFH range and can be used for copper or aluminum tube drawing.

Different viscosity levels are available to respond to different deformation requirements, allowing optimal surface finish and cleaning ability (some formulations are designed to vanish during heat treatment operations).

To know more, contact the Condat team at tube@condat.fr or visit CONDAT at Tube Düsseldorf show, Hall 5 C10