The continuous industrial development that occurs worldwide generates the need to develop new materials with increasingly higher functional properties. This need also applies to the basic material for electricity purposes, which is copper. In this article, we carry out studies on the influence of various alloying elements such as Mg, In, Si, Nb, Hf, Sb, Ni, Al, Fe, Zr, Cr, Zn, P, Ag, Sc, Pb, Sn, Co, Ti, Mn, Te and Bi on the electrical and mechanical properties of ETP-grade copper. The research involves producing copper alloys using the gravity die casting method with alloy additions of 0.1 wt.%, 0.3 wt.% and 0.5 wt.%. All resulting materials are cold-worked to produce wires, which are subsequently homogenized and annealed. The materials produced in this manner undergo testing to determine their specific electrical conductivity, tensile strength, yield strength, elongation and Vickers hardness (HV10 scale).

Today’s world is a place where lack of electrical energy would be unimaginable for most of society. All the conductors in the world, both aluminum and copper, have their origin in various types of casting lines where the liquid metal after crystallization is being processed into the form of wires and microwires. However, the efficiency of the continuous casting processes of metals and the final quality of the manufactured product strictly depend on the design of the used crystallizers, the materials used during its production and its quality. Research conducted in this paper focuses on the latter, i.e., external surface quality of the graphite crystallizer at the place of contact with the primary cooling system. In order to quantify its influence on the continuous casting process numerical analyses using the finite element method has been conducted, which results have been further confirmed during empirical tests in laboratory conditions. It has been proven with all of the proposed methods that the temperature of the obtained cast rod is closely linked to the aforementioned surface quality, as when its roughness coefficient surpasses a certain value the temperature of the obtained product increases almost twofold from approx. 150–170 °C to 300–320 °C. These values might influence the quality and final properties of the cast rod, the susceptibility to wire drawing process and possible formation of wire drawing defects and therefore be of much importance to the casting and processing industry.

Twin Roll Casting technology belongs to modern, integrated method of processing aluminum and its alloys. This method includes preparation of liquid metal and its continuous casting between the rotating cylindrical crystallizers, optional homogenizing treatment, cold rolling and optional interoperation or final heat treatment. Final products of TRC method are strips with a thickness from few to several millimeters, which can be directly subjected to cold rolling process to afford a sheet. Properties of final product are limited by the material’s condition, its chemical composition and also selected path of its processing technology. The paper presents research results of chemical composition and mechanical properties of strips obtained in Twin Roll Casting processing line.

New materials used in various industries require sufficiently high mechanical properties, fine-grained structure and ease of metal forming while minimizing production costs. For this reason, work is being carried out to develop new groups of alloys that make it possible to increase the strength of the obtained components while reducing their weight, and thus reducing production costs. This article focuses on two aluminium-based alloys with different content of alloying additives: copper and magnesium i.e., AlCu3Mg3 and AlCu4.5Mg6, which were produced by metallurgical synthesis. The as-cast alloys were characterized for their basic physical, mechanical and electrical properties and were subjected to structural analysis. In the next stage, the alloys were modified with 100, 500, 1000 and 2000 ppm of titanium and then their hardness, electrical conductivity and density were tested. Samples were also subjected to microstructural analysis. The obtained results allowed to examine the evolution of the AlCuMg alloy properties depending on the content of alloy additives and the amount of used modifier.

This study presents results on developing new copper alloys for electrode caps used in resistance spot welding (RSW) of galvanized steel sheets. Two copper alloys—CuCr0.7Zr0.05 and CuCr0.3Ni0.1Zr0.05—were modified with scandium (Sc) additions of 0.01 and 0.05 wt. %. Within this article, the influence of scandium content on Vickers hardness (HV) and electrical conductivity during alloy aging was investigated. In addition, the electrode life of the produced electrodes was subjected to detailed analysis. The results demonstrated that Sc modification enables an increase in hardness with only a minimal decrease in electrical conductivity. Moreover, Sc-modified electrodes exhibited a significantly reduced diffusion layer thickness in the electrode material, which led to lower degradation of the working face geometry and reduced material loss compared with commercial Cu–Cr–Zr electrodes. Mechanical testing showed that spot joints produced with the new electrodes exceed the minimum shear–tension strength requirements even after 500 welds. These results confirm that the proposed alloying approach extends electrode cap life and improves spot weld quality, supporting its application in industrial RSW.

Modern manufacturing methods of non-ferrous metals, especially aluminum and its alloys, are more and more often based on integrated technologies combining multiple operations in a single process. One of the most popular methods for producing flat components by cold working is twin roll casting technology (TRC). It allows to eliminate from manufacturing the extremely expensive hot rolling operation, as the TRC semi-product (strip) can be directly cold rolled. The results of mechanical and electrical properties and structure examination of strips after casting were presented in the paper. The effect of cold rolling parameters on post-process mechanical properties and structure of sheets was investigated too.