Difference between cold drawing and cold rolling

When we say something about precision tubes or cold finished tubes, what we mean is always cold drawn Steel Tube and cold rolled steel tube.

There are big differences between cold drawn tubes and cold rolled tubes.

1. Cold rolled tubes have better size tolerance, especially for thin wall tubes.

2. Cold rolled tubes always have higher tensile strength, because of much bigger thickness reduction or bigger size forming during cold rolling. Based on this point, cold rolling is more economic for some special sizes.

3. Cold drawn tubes have better performance on size consistency, because of the consistent cold drawing speed for the whole workpiece.

Cold rolling is widely applied in thin wall precision tubes, while cold drawing is widely applied in regular size precision tubes.