Cold drawn seamless tube VS Hot rolled seamless steel pipe

The leading honed tube suppliers introduces what are the differences between cold drawn seamless tubes and hot rolled seamless tubes

Seamless steel tubes are widely used in various industries, and normally they comes in two different types, which are cold drawn seamless tube and hot rolled seamless tube. What are the differences between these two types?

The difference between hot rolling and cold drawing:

Hot rolling & cold drawing both can be used to produce seamless steel tubes, their main diffence is that hot rolling is hot finishing, and cold drawing is cold finishing.

First of all, we need to know the main differences between hot rolling and cold drawing.

1. Hot rolling refers to the rolling process conducted above the temperature at which recrystallization occurs, while cold rolling is performed below this temperature. In certain cases, cold rolling may involve slight heating, but the temperature remains relatively low. This is done to ensure that the material remains hard after the cold rolling process. However, if the desired material formation requires high precision, annealing is necessary.
2. Cold rolling and hot rolling typically produce plates, tubes or profiles, whereas cold drawing is commonly used for cylindrical cross-section wire and tube. Moreover, hot-rolled plates are predominantly composed of steel with elevated alloy content and strength, while cold-rolled steel consists of low-carbon and low-alloy steel. Cold rolling enhances material strength and guarantees superior surface quality.

The differences between cold-drawn seamless steel tube and hot-rolled seamless steel pipe aredifferent from that of plate.

1. Seamless steel pipes are divided into two types: hot-rolled (extruded) seamless steel pipes and cold-drawn (pilgered) seamless steel tubes due to their different manufacturing processes.
2. Cold drawn (pilgered) seamless tubes are divided into two types: round tubes and special-shaped tubes. Cold-drawn steel tubes generally requires multiple drawing, and there must be corresponding stress relief annealing between each drawing to ensure the smooth progress of the next cold drawing.
3. From the outside, the cold-rolled seamless steel pipe tends to have a small diameter, and the hot-rolled seamless steel pipe tends to have a large diameter.
4. The precision of cold-rolled seamless steel pipe is higher than that of hot-rolled seamless steel pipe, and the price is also higher than that of hot-rolled seamless steel pipe.
5. Cold-drawn seamless tubes typically possess a smaller diameter than hot rolled, typically below 406 mm. Notably, the outer diameter precision of cold-drawn seamless pipes is exceptionally high, and their length is generally shorter compared to hot-rolled seamless pipes.
6. In terms of wall thickness, cold drawn seamless pipes are more uniform than hot rolled seamless tubes.
7. Cold drawn seamless tube is more popular for producing honed tube and chrome plated OD tube for hydraulic cylinders, while hot rolled seamless pipes are less popular on producing hydraulic cylinder tubes. Only when the hydraulic cylinder barrel size is very large, there is no such big size of cold drawn tube is available, then the hot rolled tubes are used to produce the hydraulic cylinder tubes.

Our factory is a leading high quality honed tube manufacturer and supplier in China. Our factory produces various materials and sizes of cold drawn seamless tube for hydraulic cylinder tube, besides this, the cold drawn tubes can be usde in many different areas as fluid convey lines.