Aluminum Wire in Metallizing

Presented by Kevin Hunter, Shaped Wire/Solon Specialty Wire Legget & Platt Inc.

Aluminum Wire is one of the primary consumables in today’s vacuum metallizing
industry for flexible packaging and other applications. Typically when problems are encountered, the aluminum is often overlooked based on the past history and experience that suggests the likelihood of a defect is low. However, the characteristics of the aluminum wire do have the potential to create problems during the metallizing process. These characteristics can also be controlled to optimize the metallizing process. The aluminum wire has the potential to affect the uniformity of web coatings, boat life as well as the transmission rates of the final product. A brief background on the processes involved in producing the aluminum wire as well as the key characteristics of this wire and their impact will be discussed.