Strips and foil belong to flat products. They have a smaller size (thickness and width), if compared with sheets and flat bars. This allows applying them in small devices that, as a rule, are widely used in electric engineering. It should be mentioned that strip, in turn, is a primary material for foil production.
Nickel strips and foil can be purchased at Metotechnics website on the prices page, via e-mail or by phone.
The grades, production technologies, sizes, supply condition, applications of these products are described on this page in the corresponding sections.
Grades
These products are made of N-1 primary nickel and NP0, NP1, NP2, NP3, NP4 semi-finished nickel. N-1 grade has the highest Ni+Co content (99.95%) and its admixture content is 0.05%. Ni+Co content of NP1 is 99.9% and Ni+Co content of NP4 - up to 99.0%.
“EVI” abbreviation in NP marking means that the alloy was produced with applying vacuum-induction annealing.
The chemical composition of NP1, NP2, NP3, NP4 grades is given in GOST 492-2006, chemical composition of N-1 is given in GOST 849-97.
Production
Тhe technology of producing nickel strips depends on their primary alloy. Thus, semi-finished materials made of N-1 primary nickel are produced with electrolytic reduction (see article Nickel-plating. Use of nickel anodes and cathodes for coating application). Products of NP1,...,NP4 are made with the same methods as for producing nickel sheets and flat bars, , that is cold rolling. After this several technological operations are performed for cleaning the surface of by-product chemical compounds, attaining all necessary technological and mechanical properties and required length and width values. Such operations include thermal processing, flattening, mechanical and chemical finishing (processing), edge trimming, cutting.
N-1 products are made in unnannealed (hard) form. NP1, NP2, NP3, NP4 strips are made in soft, semi-hard or hard form.
The product size should be within certain ranges. Thickness is the main peculiarity of the described semi-finished products as they are much thinner than sheets or flat bars that also belong to flat products. Electrolytic nickel strip can be 0.05 (foil)-0.20 mm thick, cold-worked strip - 0.05-2 mm thick. Its length is another peculiarity: that fact that strips are usually supplied in rolls means that they are rather long. Thus, N-1 strip is usually 2-5 m long and 559-630 mm wide, NP strip is 3-30 m long and 10-300 mm wide.
It should be mentioned that nickel foil is a strip with with low thickness (0.1 mm and less).
Sizes, supply condition, mechanical properties of these semi-finished materials are regulated by GOST 15515-70 and GOST 2170-73.
Application
Nickel strip is used for producing electric heaters and resistance elements with stable electric parameters.
Nickel strip is widely used for making battery units consisting of two or more elements that accumulate electricity. Dot (direct-energy) welding is used for this. This is applied for welding the strip length to the poles of several elements joining it into a battery unit. The unit components can be connected in series, parallely or combined. Nickel strip is widely used for connecting batteries into a unit due to peculiar physical and chemical and technological properties: low heat capacity and specific resistance; high plasticity and tensile strength; corrosive resistance; resistance to temperatures up to 960 °C and current up to 17.8 A (in case of short-term current - up to 35 A) without changing properties. Usually NP2 nickel is used for these purposes.
Prices
The cost and required amount of nickel strip and foil can be calculated on Prices page. The products can be also ordered online.