tinned buss wire vs silver plated buss wire

[made2hack]

Hello,

Ok, am contemplating buying some solid core copper wire that is either tinned or silver plated that I can use on a through hole proto board to create interconnects. This is the uninsulated kind that is solid copper but either tinned or silver plated.

The Ag plated is 2x or more the price of Tinned copper. Is it worth it? When do you guys use the Ag coated? All the time or only on "Special" projects and can you please define that. I mean yes Ag is better at corrosion resistance and conductivity but is the high price justified? Tin is only 15% the conductivity of Cu, how does that affect current handling of the wire? Does it affect it? Or  is it the inside core that matters?

Thanks,

[Zero999]

The thin silver layer only makes any difference at high frequencies, as most of the current flows on the outside of the conductor due to the skin effect.

[continuo]

Such high-frequency circuits wouldn't properly work on protoboards anyway... Besides their higher price the silver plated wires have that annoying habit to turn blackish after some time, due to oxidation. Looks ugly. I wouldn't use them for that purpose...

[Tandy]

Silver is the the best possible conductor but tarnishes very easily. So you might use it for connecting sensors with tiny currents or for very high frequency radio circuits but not general purpose links on prototype circuits.

Tinned wire is better general purpose wire because it is easy to solder and tarnishes far less than silver.

[T3sl4co1l]

Over what kind of time scale, I guess?  Silver tins very well, but will tarnish eventually and then it's harder to tin (if the silver plate corrodes through, it'll also be very slightly higher resistance, but not enough to notice).  Tin plate always tins well, though as it gets older and tarnished, it takes a little more flux to work through.

If you're going to end up tacking stuff onto it, conductivity probably doesn't matter; the silver will be dissolved by the solder anyway.  Might still have some use as coil winding, if you ever to some RF stuff, but not a big deal.

Tim

[made2hack]

Cool thanks.

Will go with the Tinned copper. I don't yet work with High freq.