magnet wire

Nope.

Light colour = low temp ( 105C to 125C rated)

Dark colour = high temp ( 175 to 215 C rated )

Use your soldering iron find out for sure.

If no amount of heat or time burns the enamel off, it's high temp.

.... Phil

It's easier to wind transformers if you can keep track of which strands are which; when doing bifilar windings, one red and one green strand is just ... the simplest way to wind the puppy.

I mainly see 'clear', 'red', 'green'; are there other common colors?

There is no color code.

There are standards for what they get coated with and how thick it is, but NOT what color the maker chooses to make that coating, nor does it have any use as any kind of indicator of make-up whatsoever.

Nope. There is "single strength" and "double strength" and it refers to coating thickness and electrical isolation capacity. Color has NOTHING to do with ANY particular about ANY mag wire.

The temp thing varied as well, because one can buy wire now that is high temp, but DOES allow soldering.

One can still order the type that does not take solder well, in either version of high temp or low temp.

The solderability thing was so that a person could make a solder joint without any scraping of the wire, which the other coating requires. So all the wire makers followed suit.

In the past, ALL termination ends had to have the coating literally scraped off, because a soldering iron would not even 'touch' it.

Typically stuff like formvar or polyimide that can withstand high temperature is darker colored. The solderable polyester etc. is clear, but can have color added.

Here's one manufacturer- have a gander at the available insulation types:

Those are the most common colors. I've also seen blue and yellow.

Here's one supplier's list of available colors:

Red, Green. Natural, Blue, Black, Violet, Orange, White, Brown

The best thing about MWS is that I can hop in my car and ten minutes later I've got the wire that I wanted.

Bob

That's a great resource. Thanks.

tm

You haven't lived until you've seen a spool of #9 square with puce enamel. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Even in purple:

Purple is just violet that never graduated.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

And not only that, but who's ever heard of Roy G. Bip? ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Thanks, all. Looks like I'll just buy whatever pops up on eBay and wind away. There is no high temperature, voltage or current involved here so looks like I'm good.

Correct, except there is a triple build available on special order.

Yes, and even better still, though even harder to solder, is "Kynar" 'wrapped' wire, where they actually have to helically wrap the strand due to the makeup of the 'covering'.

So the other gets "coated". How they seal the helix perfectly, I do not know (heat and chemical?), but it has the highest dielectric strength of them all, and the highest cost too, usually, IIRC.

Most likely. Any surplus spool will be worth it, even if you have to peel off the first couple hundred turns to get to "fresh meat". It will indeed be fresh. Surplus stores (military) have mag wire a lot of times.

Yeah..i worked with Kynar wire at SLAC ages ago; mechanically tough as well.