CHAPTER I 0
CABLE MANUFACTURING [lo-1, -21
Lawrence J. Kelly and Carl C. Landinger
1. INTRODUCTION
Insulated electric power cable manufacturing involves a broad range of com-
plexity depending on the cable design to be produced. Different cable plants
may be capable of a limited or broad range of designs. Then, those capable of a
broad range may limit operations to only a few steps in the manufacturing pro-
cess.
Despite this large variability in plants, the steps in the manufacture remain ba-
sically the same, whether done in one facility or a number of facilities. Conduc-
tor manufacturing, in Chapter 3, is common to all cables with metallic conduc-
tors. The manufacture of extruded dielectric power cables and laminar dielectric
power cables follow.
2. CONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING
In Chapter 3, Conductors, it was pointed out that for efficient distribution of
electric power, the conductors must be produced from a high-conductivity ma-
terial. It was also shown that copper and aluminum offer the best available com-
binations of conductivity, workability, strength, and cost to become the most
popular power cable conductor materials. From the conductor manufacturing
standpoint (we will not attempt to include mining, refining, and fabricating
stages), we will begin at the point where copper and aluminum are received as
large coils of round rod. The diameter of aluminum rod for conductors is com-
monly 318 inch (0.375 inches). For larger solid conductors-i.e., 1/0 AWG or
larger-it
is common and necessary to begin with a larger-diameter rod.
2.1 Wire Drawing
In wire drawing, the copper or aluminum rod is drawn through a series of suc-
cessively smaller dies to reduce the rod to a wire of the desired diameter. The
quality of the wire surface depends on sufficient drawing and reduction to
eliminate surface defects. Thus, there is the need to utilize a rod having a
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Copyright © 1999 by Marcel Dekker, Inc.
diameter significantly larger than the solid wire to be produced. If fine wire is
de