Manufacture of multifilamentary Nb_3Sn superconducting wires having fine filaments usually involves two subelement stacking and three billet extrusion steps. A new technique of fabricating multifilamentary wires has been developed to eliminate one subelement stacking and one billet extrusion from the process by using cabled subelements. A bronze route Nb_3Sn superconducting wire with approx 6,000 filaments of 4 #mu#m diameter was fabricated using seven-strand cabled monocore subelements and compared with the wires produced using the conventional process. The workability of the new wire was excellent.Its critical current densities in magnetic fields and other superconducting performances were identical to that of the conventionally processed wires, and also meet the specifications for an industry standard wire. This technique, which can also be applied to fabricate multifilamentary NbTi superconducting wires, has the potential of reducing fabrication cost of multifilamentary superconducting wires.
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