Talking about the impurity levels present in a copper, there’s currently no need to reduce it further thanks to the continuing developments done in electrolytic refining processes. The only biggest challenge facing the copper mesh industry is the various surface defects that originated from the process of wire drawing, caused by delamination wear. Current efforts are made to resolve this concern, focusing on improving the quality of drawing lubricants, rod surface, effective filtration of impurities, and production of more efficient drawing dies.
This further leads to the most crucial concern in the future. That is creating and developing better and more sensitive sensors that can detect the defects on copper mesh, bar, and rod, in a non-destructive way with the use of non-contact testing techniques. The most used inspection method and equipment today is not fully capable of detecting many of the surface defects which are too small to be caught by the present sensors. Along with this is the invention of on-line inspection device that can easily and effectively detect any presence of internal defects such as macro-porosity.
While the factors affecting the processing, final properties, and overall performance of copper mesh has to be identified in a more quantitative manner, the future challenges and the corresponding solutions will surely alleviate the problems associated with its production.