Production of Tantalum Beads

• How Tantalum beads are made
• From tantalum wire to tantalum ball blanks
• Flashing – From tantalum ball blanks to tantalum beads
• Grinding – Reaching the perfect shape of the tantalum beads

How Tantalum beads are made

In principle a tantalum bead is simple a tantalum ball. The Production of tantalum beads are similar to production of other metal spheres like e.g. a ball bearing balls and the concept has not changed for centuries. The process starts with tantalum wire and end up with a round tantalum beads.

From tantalum wire to tantalum ball blanks

The first stage in the tantalum beads process is heading. Tantalum beads ball blanks are headed from rolls of tantalum wire. A piece of tantalum wire is cut of in the heading machine and the tantalum wire piece is pressed in to a spherical shaped tantalum part – a tantalum ball or tantalum bead blank. Due to excess tantalum material the shape of the tantalum beads blank is similar to the planet Saturn.

A tantalum beads ball blank can be seen here!

Flashing – From tantalum ball blanks to tantalum beads

The next step in the production of the tantalum bead is to remove the “ring” from the tantalum bead blank. This process is called Flashing. The tantalum beads ball blanks are rolled between two hardened alloy plates (rill plates) under high pressure. The plates contain grooves in where the tantalum beads balls blank are placed. The tantalum bead ball blanks travel through the grooves, they spin and tumble until the rough edges are removed and the tantalum beads ball blank is squeezed into a more spherical shape.

Grinding – Reaching the perfect shape of the tantalum beads

The tantalum beads are then precision ground in several processes. These processes uses the same kind of machine which rolls the tantalum beads balls between two fixed plates, but in this operation, one plate contains abrasives. Finally, the tantalum beads are inspected.