Multipass cold drawing of magnesium alloy minitubes for biodegradable vascular stents

Magnesium alloys possess highly limited room-temperature formabilities. This presents a technological barrier to the fabrication of minitubes for biodegradable vascular stents. The research was aimed at developing precision forming technology to fabricate ZM21 magnesium alloy minitubes with a refined microstructure. A multipass cold drawing process with a moving mandrel was successfully developed to convert seamless hollow billets through five passes of cold drawing and an interpass annealing treatment into minitubes with an outside diameter of 2.9 mm and a wall thickness of 0.217 mm, ready for laser cutting into vascular stents. It was found that a cumulative reduction in cross-section area as much as 32% could be applied to the material without causing fracture. However, a further reduction in cross-section area required annealing at 300 °C for 1 h to change a twinned microstructure into a recrystallized grain structure and to regain formability. The interpass annealing treatment after the fourth pass led to a reduction in drawing force by 22%, in comparison with the drawing force at the fourth pass of drawing. The variations in the outside diameter and wall thickness of the minitubes could be kept within 5 and 12 μm, respectively. Further research is directed toward improvements in dimensional precisions.