To provide a steel wire material which maintains an improved effect in wire drawability for a long period of time and enables power consumption during wet wire drawing to be reduced.
The steel wire material has an alloy plating layer on the surface thereof and is subjected to wet wire drawing in a production process of a steel wire. The amount of a metal oxide on the alloy plating layer is ≤20 mg/m2. The surface of the steel wire material is treated with an aqueous solution containing a triazole compound. It is preferable that the steel wire material is subjected to a surface treatment using an aqueous phosphoric acid solution having a concentration of 0.2-1.0 mol/L and then, the resulting steel wire material is subjected to a surface treatment using an aqueous solution containing a triazole compound. Further, the surface treatment time with the aqueous phosphoric acid solution is preferably 0.5-10 s. Furthermore, it is preferable that the alloy plating layer is a brass-plating layer, and that the triazole compound is benzotriazole or tolyltriazole.
Yumiko Sugimoto
Atsushi Shinoda