Peter,
Here are two links to Ultrasonic wire cleaning.
www.bransoncleaning.com/industry_wire_cleaning.asp
www.hielscher.com/ultrasonics/wire_01.htm
Neither of these look like what was at Westinghouse in Jeffereson City MO about 30 years ago (boy do I feel old!!!)
That unit was a made up of some stainless steel pipes about 8 inches in diameter and about 5 feet long. There was a tube for each wire. The entrance and exit was reduced so that the opening was not much larger than the wire size. I think it might have had steam piped into it but I don’t remember.
You are right about the speeds, size for size, not being as fast as extruding wire. If you were making film coated magnet wire that was 18 awg or about 1 mm, there was a time when you would be lucky if you were operating at 20-30 meters/minute. But since the typical system had 16 to 24 lines, the cumulative speed and out put was significant. So a 20 line system would be cumulatively producing wire at about 600 meters/minute which is comparable to extruding. The major difference is that you could be making a couple of different sizes at the same time and putting them on different size spools too.
Additionally film insulated wire produced a coating that was very thin and extrusion does not result in a similar product. There has been work on extruding magnet wire but it is not the same product as film insulated wire and the thermal applications are limited.
I ave lots of info in boxes. As I clean out my garage I will probably find info.
Richard
