Where can I buy some small wire ( about # 28 to 30 ) that has the enamel type of insulation that can be soldered and the heat will melt the insulation ? There was some on ebay I bought that did not seem to work. After checking it out, it seems that it needs to be heated to almost 400 deg C and when I tried that, it did not do all that well.
Wire such as Essex Soderon is solderable, as you want. The insulation melts
Amazon, for one, has it at
Cheers, Dave M
there are 2 types of enamelled copper wire, some is solderable without stripping first. Where? There are lots of electronic part suppliers. You didn't say what country.
NT
Funny story...
25 years ago, I contracted some LCD monitors from Japan as part of a product offering. They had been modded using that type of wire. The QC manager took one look and insisted that they all be rejected. YMMV
As far as those mod wires often used on circuit boards, the company I worked for hired some engineers who worked in the aerospace industry.
We had them manufacture controls for industrial battery chargers and the boards had to me modded by adding a few jumpers.
One customer did not like the looks of them though of course all was OK electrically. Anyway, when I mentioned that to one of the engineers he just laughed. He said, "Battery chargers, heck we have planes out there flying with green wires."
Soldering green wires is common. The problem with the melting insulation is that you can't tell whether you got a reliable connection among all the melted plastic.
The monitors in question used stranded wires with melted insulation. You solder the joint, then snip the wire. The strands stuck out in all directions, sometimes overlaying other parts or traces. "Hoping for the best" was not attractive to the QC manager.
Google for 'solderable magnet wire'. Amazon has some, Adafruit has this:
nicely removes 1-2mm of coating.( Don't breath the smoke.)
-- mikko OH2HVJ
Hello. I had been looking for that stuff too, once. Unsuccessfully. Do you maybe have some more trade names or brands I could use as search terms? Soderon did not work on farnell.. and Essex gives only connectors n stuff.
Maybe the name of the coating would work. the hi temp crap is called polyurethane here I believe, and strangely enough the farnell people have the notice solderable on all of that magnet wire when it really isn't.
Belden called their version Beldsol.
That yielded a result. Funny. This is from their datasheet:
el
k.
00 :ob
How trustworthy do you think items are on Amazon?
I have had several negative experiences:
A 15" LCD monitor that I bought had a power supply that had no registration marks on it at all. Taking a closer look was entertaining -
the power cord (also uncontaminated with UL/CSA/CE marks)) had a two prong male plug going to a three prong computer style power female socket. If you flexed the power cable at either end the insulation covering the wires pulled out of the corresponding plug ends...
Another item of inferior quality quality was a LED night light that had the metal threaded portion come up about 1/4" above the edge of the socket - nice shock risk!
I would expect magnet wire sold on Amazon to possibly being poor quality
clones with insulation that probably doesn't meet its own "specifications ".
If it isn't sold by a company with a physical address then I would consider it too risky...name brand product means little, it is the dependability of the company selling it that determines if the product is counterfeit or not.
There is a lot of crap out there being sold to an unsuspecting public.
John
I am in the US.
There seems to be lots that will heat strip/solder around 400 deg C for use on motors and transformers but I am looking for some that I can use on circuit boards and will heat strip at a more normal electronic solder temperature of around 300 deg C or less.
In use the wire will never get very hot, say like inside a computer or TV.
Unless they make more than one type of wire labled like that, it takes about 390 deg C to melt the insulation from a youtube vidio. That is what I bought off ebay and it does es not melt and solder evenwith my iron set to over 350 deg C. The same company does make some wire that is advertised at a much higher temperature rating also. I bought 3 different sizw wire spools from them and none of them would melt the insulation at anything near the normal soldering temperatute. I even tried it at a much higher temperature with my hot air rework wand.
Years ago a company (think it was Hamtronics) had some kits that coils were wound and the wire was soldered to the terminals without manually stripping.
Before I dive into the magnet wire selection swamp, have you considered using a chemical stripper or abrasive stripper?
For chemical stripper, I use common furniture stripper (methylene chloride). Dip, wait about 15 seconds, wipe clean, dip in flux, and tin in a small solder pot: I don't have one of those. I use a stainless tubing endcap attached to a big soldering iron with a hose clamp. Ugly, but effective. I haven't measured the temp, but I'm sure it's less than 400C. Oh, they make a commercial version of my kludge: The down side of chemical stripping is that it's slow, but if you have a bunch of wires to strip, you can just clump them together and dip them in stripper simultaneously.
Drain cleaner allegedly works: but looks dangerous.
For abrasive magnet wire stripping, there are machines and tools available. The problem is that #28 or #30 might be too thin to do with some of the tools. Try it with some sandpaper. If that works, you have a chance. If you want to get fancy, grind a slot lengthwise down a pair of tweezers or pliers that fits the wire diameter. Dump the wire end in some abrasive powder, clamp, and pull. You will probably need to do it a few times. I do this when I don't want to play with the chemicals. Tin when done.
Ok, on to the vendors:
gotta run...
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
If OP is willing to have a solder pot running he can crank that up to 400 and just dip the ends of the wires in the pot. That would tin the ends and make them ready for soldering to the board.
>
A BIC lighter works well for burning off the varnish, then rub off the carbonized varnish and tin...
John :-#)#
Thanks for all the info Jeff.
I guess that wire like I really want is not around.
I am looking for an easy way to build circuits on a perf board. I thougt it would be easy to just lay some magnet wire on a terminal and let the solder melt the insulation. Then go to the next connection and solder that one with out having to mechanically or chemically remove the insulation. Does not look that type of wire is around.
So as I will have to find some method of stripping the wire, I might as well continue like I have been doing and use the wire like the hard and flopy drive cables. It is a small solid wire with the plastic type of insulation. Easy to strip with just small wire strippers.
That's probably wire wrap wire. It's all #30AWG tin plated solid wire. The technology is mostly obsolete today. There were huge piles of the pre-cut wire lengths and spools scattered all over the local surplus stores. I have a few large bundles left that I use for making breadboards. Highly recommended.
The only things I use magnet wire for is torroid inductors and repairing motors.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Look for WIRE WRAP wire, that meets your specs - the insulation melts out of the way and is useful for low voltage work...
John :-#)#
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