Element14 do not sell red wire in 1 metre lengths (seriously)

[299792458]

I was looking to buy some red and black 1mm2 hook up wire in 1 metre lengths, but element14 sold every colour except red and black, for which I must get a 100m roll.  See https://au.element14.com/w/c/cable-wire-cable-assemblies/hook-up-wire/prl/results?conductor-area-csa=1mm-&sort=P_PRICE

Tried 1.5mm2 and 0.75mm2, no red except in 100m rolls.  So I did a search for red hook up wire: https://au.element14.com/w/c/cable-wire-cable-assemblies/hook-up-wire/prl/results?jacket-colour=red&sort=P_PRICE

All you can buy is 0.25mm2, 26AWG awaiting delivery, some low strand count 18AWG until stock exhausted, and 6mm2 and over, that is it!  The few other results are all no longer stocked.  Try a different colour like blue and look at all the results: https://au.element14.com/w/c/cable-wire-cable-assemblies/hook-up-wire?jacket-colour=blue&sort=P_PRICE

All I can conclude is that element14 is intentionally restricting sale of the most popular colours in order to force people to buy 100m rolls.

[Ian.M]

Cut wire is *ALWAYS* labour intensive and wasteful of stock, as staff cutting wire need to coil it for dispatch without the benefit of a reel, and its difficult to keep track reliably of which reel has enough left on it to fulfil the current orders and to sort orders to minimise wastage.

The true cost of 10m of wire in labour to cut and pack it, warehouse space for the wire cutting station, time to keep it stocked, admin overheads etc. may far exceed the cost of the wire itself.  Compare with picking and bagging N items from a bin.

Therefore its possible they may be planning to get out of the cut wire business for smaller wire diameters and you've just discovered that their stocks of the most popular colours have run out. 

[Kjelt]

Indeed I just bought the 100m of 0,75 and 0,5 mm2 and even 250m of the 0,25mm2 wire in many colours.
Price of 1m was equal to 10m when buying the rol of 100m.

[Berni]

Just buy a whole roll, you will find that roll useful for many other things.

But if you want lots of multicolored wire on small reels then the Chinese have you covered. Something along the lines of this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/30-28-26-24-22-20-18awg-5-colors-Flexible-Silicone-Wire-Tinned-Copper-line/162809854656

Me and some of my coworkers ordered this particular one and it is indeed really nice wire. Soft flexible silicone heat resistant insulation and fine strands of pre-tinned copper inside. You have to watch out a bit when buying wire from them as they do sometimes like to sell you crappy stuff (bad insulation, aluminum conductors etc), so if it looks too cheap to be true, it probably is.

[Kjelt]

You have to watch out a bit when buying wire from them as they do sometimes like to sell you crappy stuff (bad insulation, aluminum conductors etc), so if it looks too cheap to be true, it probably is.

Yes I have in the past received wire that was magnetic susceptible, so probably ordinary iron 

[Zero999]

Why on earth do you want to buy wire in 1 metre lengths? I wouldn't even consider anything buying shorter than a 10m reel.

The same is true for ¹/₄ 1% tolerance metal film resistors, which I see no point in buying fewer than 10 of and am quite happy with minimum order quantities of 100.

[soldar]

Why on earth do you want to buy wire in 1 metre lengths? I wouldn't even consider anything buying shorter than a 10m reel.

I agree. There are basic supplies that you just have plenty in your stock. For a project you might special order special parts but cable?

Besides some rolls of brand new cable I have a box or crate where I have scraps from here and there so I have all sorts of different types. Thinner, thicker, rigid, heat resistant, shielded, etc. Of course, it takes a while to rummage in there and then often not find what I wanted.

I cannot imagine ordering 1 m length of cable. I get more than that from construction site dumpsters.

[tooki]

FYI, soldar, wire != cable.

[Kjelt]

Indeed single stranded mounting wire is cheap and universally usable for your electronics hobby.
Not only do you want to have it in different diameters also in for instance heatproof isolation like teflon or silicone for breadboarding, multiple colors is luxury but necessary to debug the prototype after multiple years 

[soldar]

FYI, soldar, wire != cable.

I know. I was just talking in general.

[299792458]

I don't actually need 1 metre lengths, I'd get 10m rolls if I could, but it's 100m rolls or nothing!  At ~$50 each it adds up, especially if I want to get different colours and wire gauges.  If what Ian.M says is correct about them getting out of the cut wire business, I should get lengths of some of the other colours now while I still can.

If I can only have one wire gauge (other than 24awg breadboard wire), would 1mm2 or 1.5mm2 be more suitable (Goldilocks problem)?  It's mostly for stuff 5 - 10A, which I know 1mm2 can handle, but I like to minimise voltage drop.

[Berni]

For when you need thicker wires you can often find some mains cable laying around. Found both in solid core or stranded variation depending on what you need.

In the form of long continuous lengths of wire i have a set of reels that mostly falls into thin and thick categories. Have a few colors of really thin stuff, basically wirewrapping wire and similar tiny wire, this is useful for doing bodges on PCBs or carrying signals around short distances without being bulky. For when i need more power i have bunch of 20 AVG silicone wire spools in various colors (Probably well over 100m of it in total and cost less than 50 bucks). For when that's not enough i have a bunch 2 conductor 2.5mm2 speaker wire(Some of this was used to make high current crocodile cables for PSUs). The next step up from that is 50mm2 cables with lugs on the ends for really high currents.

[mariush]

Something else you could do would be to just buy one color wire in large quantity (black or white or transparent) and then buy some heatshrink tube of various colors.
When needed, just cut some small rings of heatshrink and apply them at the ends of your wires.... heat the heatshrink and it will compress around the wire. It won't come off...
 
You can cut a lot of tiny rings from a 25 cents piece of 1.2m of heatshrink tube.

[Zero999]

I don't actually need 1 metre lengths, I'd get 10m rolls if I could, but it's 100m rolls or nothing!  At ~$50 each it adds up, especially if I want to get different colours and wire gauges.  If what Ian.M says is correct about them getting out of the cut wire business, I should get lengths of some of the other colours now while I still can.

If I can only have one wire gauge (other than 24awg breadboard wire), would 1mm2 or 1.5mm2 be more suitable (Goldilocks problem)?  It's mostly for stuff 5 - 10A, which I know 1mm2 can handle, but I like to minimise voltage drop.

That sounds a bit pricey. My local supplier sells 100m rolls of 1mm² for £21.06 or about 38 AUD each.
https://www.rapidonline.com/rapid-32-0-2mm-equipment-wire-1500v-6a-62325

EDIT: I've found some cheaper.
£15.43 per reel, which is just 27.82 AUD.
https://www.edwardes.co.uk/categories/1-0mm-tri-rated-cable

Just stick to one or two colours for power, say red and black or perhaps blue and brown, if it might be used for mains.

Stock a greater range of colours for signal and low power applications.

[mariush]

TME.eu has  AWG 20 cable  at 0.28$ per m in 100m spool.... ex: https://www.tme.eu/en/details/ul-csa-har-20bk/single-core-cable-strand/lapp-kabel/4180501/

30m AWG 22 spools are at 0.29$ a meter : https://www.tme.eu/en/details/9921.002100/single-core-cable-strand/belden/9921-002100/

... and lots of other sizes.

Solid core wires start from 15$ for a 30m spool : link

300m spools are 85$ ... that works out to 8$ a spool of 30 meters.

[plurn]

If you only want short lengths of hook up wire, why not pop into your local jaycar, altronics, radio parts, wiltronics, etc and buy from them. They typically let you cut your own lengths of wire in the shop. They are more set up for that sort of thing (selling to hobbyists) than element14. Perhaps you are in a remote area and can't do that.

I get the impression that companies like element14, digikey, mouser, etc have professionals as their target market rather than hobbyists that want a few meters of cable. Not a conspiracy just a different target market.

[tooki]

Well, digi-key certainly serves professionals, too, but they were born as a company for hobbyists, as the distributors of the day didn’t accept non-commercial orders at all. (Mouser is the same, I think.)

[rawrs]

There's not much I can add to this that has not already been said. The reason Jaycar can make a profit on the stuff is that they actually have a brick and mortar presence, and a big one at that. These customers are generally only looking for small lengths of wire for whatever need they have *right now*. You don't have that advantage as an online reseller, but you DO have the advantage of large, bulk orders, so it makes sense to not screw around with short lengths of wire that people will just go to Jaycar for, anyway. You want to have large stocks of reels on hand because if I am buying stuff online, I generally want a lot of it.

It's no surprise that they do this, really.

[ArthurDent]

What I have done to get lots of colored hook-up wire cheap is look for used multi-conductor cable at hamfests or other places. Sellers are generally glad to get rid of it for very little. It doesn't make any difference how grubby the jacket looks because I carefully slit the length of the jacket with a utility knife set so it can't cut any of the wires inside then peel the jacket off to reveal the clean wires inside. Here's an example of a 6 foot length of what was a special cable I got dirt cheap that had 10 colored stranded tinned wires plus 6 lengths of RG-174 coax cable inside. You can generally find the wire size you're interested in after a little searching and make a low offer that will probably be accepted.

Other than that, buy a kit from eBay with a few rolls of 25 foot lengths for about $15, you'll eventually use it all. Buying one meter at a time doesn't make any sense to me at all. 

[JustMeHere]

If anyone wants to see the "cost of paying someone to cut" the wire, take a look at the price breaks of 100nf MLCC (smd chip capacitors) on Digikey. 

[Ian.M]

If anyone wants to see the "cost of paying someone to cut" the wire, take a look at the price breaks of 100nf MLCC (smd chip capacitors) on Digikey. 

That's a minimal waste situation.  as when you by SMD parts 'cut tape', there's no guarantee that you will get a single piece of tape.  If you want/need that, you have to pay the premium for re-reeling onto a minireel.  Therefore, the supplier only has to have a single 'open' reel for each part they offer 'cut tape'. 

That's a lot easier to manage  than wire where you can easily end up with several part reels of the same type with less than 20m on due to the need to fulfil the order with a continuous length.  A bricks&mortar store will deal with that  and avoid the need to track remaining length accurately by when a reel comes up short, bagging and labelling the insufficient length, dropping it in the bargains bin and starting a fresh reel.  That's a *LOT* harder for an online store.

[Kjelt]

I must say that is what happened last year with tme.
I asked for a 9m cable for cablechain usage, price €8.50 per metre and got one cable of 3m and one of 6m four days later.
They said I should have stated it on the order that it should have been one single length. No refund. 

[Ian.M]

That's pretty shitty.  Even if there was a checkbox you missed for that for that item on the order form, you shouldn't have to specify single length for wire of less than one reel quantity.   Having to specify that in a free text other instructions field is IMHO unreasonable.  At the very least they should have contacted you to see if the substitution with two shorter lengths was acceptable.

10x 1m lengths of <whatever> that is normally sold and used in continuous lengths, are *NOT* equivalent to a single 10m length and any supplier that tries to tell you they are is full of crap.  If they wouldn't accept a return for full refund and I'd paid by credit card, I'd have requested a charge back by the issuer on the basis: Goods not as described.

[exe]

I like colored teflon/silicone wires as insulation doesn't shrink when soldering. Colors really help when there are many wires (e.g., when prototyping). Because of this I can't just buy a big roll from a distributor.

Also the price for teflon/silicone wires is crazy in EU, so I buy from aliexpress. Those guys have no issues with short cables. Anyway, I'm more than happy to pay the handling fee to a reputable distributor. I'm also okay to buy, say, 10M rolls, but buying 100M, or 250M rolls is just expensive waste. I'm also fine if a cable comes in several pieces.

PS also bought some short pieces of wire on a ham fest.

[tooki]

I must say that is what happened last year with tme.
I asked for a 9m cable for cablechain usage, price €8.50 per metre and got one cable of 3m and one of 6m four days later.
They said I should have stated it on the order that it should have been one single length. No refund. 

What vendor? Name and shame!

[Kjelt]

It was tme but it was a special order from Igus, all kinds of small legal letters in this case.
What probably happened is that they had 3m left and sent it and ordered the remaining 6 from Igus.
Oh well I accepted my loss since it was the only thing that has happened in four years of further excellent service.

[stevelup]

I bought 25M of LED tape a while ago and was sent 25 x 1M lengths each individually packed, and every piece had had connectors soldered to it...

Yes, I should have checked, but really if you order 25M of something that comes from the manufacturer on a reel, it's not unreasonable to expect to get a single length!

[299792458]

I caved and got 100m red and black rolls from Element14, but they are not even on proper reels!  Just a roll with string tied around it.  I had an old 100m reel of earth wire I got from them on clearence a few years back which came on a proper reel.  Not happy!  The 10m lengths of other colours I ordered were also split, with some 1 or 2 meter lengths arriving next day with the rest ariving a few days later, but this doesn't bother me too much since I'd only be using short lengths anyway.

[ArthurDent]

"...but they are not even on proper reels!"

It could be that a 'proper reel' to them, the way they have to buy it, is on a 300 or 3000 meter reel and you are getting the shortest cut length they are willing to sell. I've got a lot of wire packaged like that (a hank) with just a tie around it - see photo below. Bottom line, it worked just as well as any other length of wire I bought. 

[Kjelt]

I bought Lapp cable and they had to be per reel.
Indeed the nr of meters per reel differ per diameter, the 0,75 and 0,5m ² went per 100m but the smaller diameter 0,25mm² went per 250m 

Anyway since these distances are not handy to have in your shack, I bought empty reels at Conrad and wound them with an accudrill and DIY jig.

Edit I am on holiday so can not take a picture, this is from three years ago, in the mean time it is almost full