Development of wire drawing and surface treatment of NiTi shape memory alloys

Wires of NiTi shape memory alloys (SMA) are largely used in aerospace, robotics and biomedical applications and their performance depend upon the wire surface finishing. By its turn, in order to obtain a NiTi wire with good surface finishing a complex fabrication process is required. This work present the special wire drawing process developed to produce NiTi with good surface quality taking into account the impurity content such as carbon, wire surface treatment, intermediary annealing temperature etc.