Wire

[echen1024]

I have recently used up my roll of 22 AWG wire, in both black and red. I was wondering if someone could enlighten me on what they use and why. I thought about going ahead and purchasing another el-cheapo roll, but I would like something that is reasonably flexible and easy to work with.

[georges80]

For all my project wiring I switched years ago to teflon insulation and often silver plated stranded wires. Local junk store sells it pretty cheap in 22/24g. Not highly flexible but it is very durable with little risk of nicking/abrading through the insulation. I've source a few other gauges for different current capabilities.

For test leads to various items (test jigs, test LEDs, power supplies, electronic loads etc) I often use silicone high strand count leads. Great for high flex, but the jacket is not as durable as teflon by a long shot. Available in many gauges on ebay.

Both are solder temp proof and I like soldering the wires without having the insulation melt back.

cheers,
george.

[pickle9000]

Kynar otherwise known as wire wrap wire is very handy when modifying or repairing small traces on a pcb. Multi-colour ribbon cable also good to have on hand for rigging up a display.

There are many good brands out there but hard to determine what is what when buying locally. They are often rerolled. If you buy a small roll at least see if the wire specs or model are printed on the actual wire. Auto parts stores often have good deals on wire.

As for a production run, wire is a part and needs to be specified and purchased from a good dealer just like everything else. 

[linux-works]

I go thru lots of kynar wire wrap wire, for use on perf board prototyping.  its expensive but its thin and holds its shape well, as you bend it around under the board.  its good to have at least 4 or even 8 colors available to you so that tracing thru a mess of wiring, later, is actually possible   its something like $50/roll (not sure how long the rolls are) and those last me a long time, but its definitely not cheap and since no one really wire wraps anymore, I would not expect to see this ever getting cheaper.

for general hook-up wire, I prefer to find insulation that does not melt.  I also avoid solid wire (exception is that kynar stuff).

I love to keep rainbow ribbon cable on hand and peel off groups of wires as I need (often using off-board connectors, molex KK or similar).

for shielded stuff, rg174 or similar for when I run audio or rf cables.

sometimes I'll buy a few feet of 8conductor wire and steal the wires from the bundle just for hookup wire

[echen1024]

The Teflon sounds good. I also do hate it when the insulation pulls back while soldering wires.

[KC0PPH]

I love 30g wire. Easy to work with and if your just doing short runs or low current runs it works great.

[Richard Head]

Teflon/Tefzel is very robust but is really horrible to work with. I don't use it unless I have to.
I can't believe anyone would choose to use it on a workbench.
I generally use silicone wire but even silicone isn't as flexible as PVC.

[David Hess]

Kynar insulated wire-wrap wire is nice but for some projects and repairs where I do not need color coding, I use solderable magnet wire which has even thinner insulation and no risk of nicking with wire strippers.

[linux-works]

I have to admit, I'm a color snob



even on a small non-dense board like that, I still like having colored kynar wire.  it looks neater to me than magnet wire.  and the kynar strips easily.  stripping magnet wire is not fun (maybe a solder pot helps but many folks don't have those at home).

if kynar has a nick in its insulation, its easy to tell.  for my eyes, its harder to tell if magnet wire has a break in its insulation.  then again, magnet wire does not have its insulation melt if you keep the iron tip on it too long and kynar can easily burn if you are not careful.

[zapta]

Knyard ('mod wire') 30awg for wiring proto boards, solid 22awg for solderless breadboards, and teflon for general wiring (a local surplus store sell them for cheap and I scored on ebay a Teledyne thermal striper).

[David Hess]

even on a small non-dense board like that, I still like having colored kynar wire.  it looks neater to me than magnet wire.  and the kynar strips easily.  stripping magnet wire is not fun (maybe a solder pot helps but many folks don't have those at home).

if kynar has a nick in its insulation, its easy to tell.  for my eyes, its harder to tell if magnet wire has a break in its insulation.  then again, magnet wire does not have its insulation melt if you keep the iron tip on it too long and kynar can easily burn if you are not careful.

There is magnet wire and then there is magnet wire.  I forget what it is called but some has insulation designed to be solderable at relatively low temperatures so it is trivial to tin with a 700F iron and no solder pot or mechanical stripping is needed.  You can also get it in multiple colors although not all of them.  Since the insulation is removed by soldering, there is no issue with nicking it.

I use colored kapton wire-wrap wire when I want the color coding.

[linux-works]

There is magnet wire and then there is magnet wire

hmm, if I place an order, how do I know which is which?

lol

I have not tried the first kind.  or maybe it was the 2nd kind.  anyway, this sounds intriguing.  didn't know there was stuff that was easy to deal with.  I've only seen the annoying-to-deal-with magnet wire so I never gave any of it a 2nd look.

[edavid]

Teflon/Tefzel is very robust but is really horrible to work with. I don't use it unless I have to.
I can't believe anyone would choose to use it on a workbench.
I generally use silicone wire but even silicone isn't as flexible as PVC.

Teflon is definitely hard to strip.  There is now UL1061 wire that uses a type of PVC insulation that doesn't pull back or melt, but is fairly easy to strip.  It is worth looking for.

[nanofrog]

There is magnet wire and then there is magnet wire

hmm, if I place an order, how do I know which is which?

lol

I have not tried the first kind.  or maybe it was the 2nd kind.  anyway, this sounds intriguing.  didn't know there was stuff that was easy to deal with.  I've only seen the annoying-to-deal-with magnet wire so I never gave any of it a 2nd look.

Look for magnet wire with polyurethane/polyimide insulation (some is polyurethane/nylon, aka PUR/nylon, on wire with higher temp ratings).

Mouser carries Beldsol (Belden) here for example.

[Dinsdale]

Mr. White:  What shall we use to conduct this beautiful current with? What one particular element comes to mind?
Jesse:  Ahh! Wire!

[David Hess]

There is magnet wire and then there is magnet wire

hmm, if I place an order, how do I know which is which?

lol

I have not tried the first kind.  or maybe it was the 2nd kind.  anyway, this sounds intriguing.  didn't know there was stuff that was easy to deal with.  I've only seen the annoying-to-deal-with magnet wire so I never gave any of it a 2nd look.

Look for magnet wire with polyurethane/polyimide insulation (some is polyurethane/nylon, aka PUR/nylon, on wire with higher temp ratings).

Mouser carries Beldsol (Belden) here for example.

Search for "solderable magnet wire".  It is readily available; even Beldon and MWS make it.  Colors that I have seen include red, green, amber, and blue but for all that I know, every color is available.  I just have a giant spool 30 gauge which looks bright red but all of my spools of non-solderable magnet wire are darker colored.  It is much easier to use than Kynar insulated wire wrap wire.

This is just an example I ran across:

http://www.techfixx.com/

[nanofrog]

Search for "solderable magnet wire".  It is readily available; even Beldon and MWS make it.  Colors that I have seen include red, green, amber, and blue but for all that I know, every color is available.  I just have a giant spool 30 gauge which looks bright red but all of my spools of non-solderable magnet wire are darker colored.  It is much easier to use than Kynar insulated wire wrap wire.

This is just an example I ran across:

http://www.techfixx.com/

I thought he was after something that would separate it out from everything else in the search parameters on sites like mouser, digikey, ...

"solderable magnet wire" will do the trick in a regular search engine though, as well as eBay. 

[linux-works]

I will order and try some.  thanks for the tip.

[TerraHertz]

I have to admit, I'm a color snob

Then you'd hate my wiring style:

[echen1024]

holy hell

[nanofrog]

I have to admit, I'm a color snob

Then you'd hate my wiring style:

Glad I'm not the one debugging those boards...   

[echen1024]

I have to admit, I'm a color snob

Then you'd hate my wiring style:

Glad I'm not the one debugging those boards...   

Hopefully it works. If you tossed it to me and said "good luck" I would return to my desk and start bashing my head against the desk.

[linux-works]

those boards are unsupportable.  sorry.  I would not accept that mess of wires on my project.

reminds me of the old wire-wrap days.  those were not good days, btw

[TerraHertz]

those boards are unsupportable.  sorry.  I would not accept that mess of wires on my project.

They were development boards. And yes, they were quite easy to work on, and modify.
Schematics were standard style, with IC numbers and a grid reference, so locating pins on specific ICs was not a problem.
To replace or move a wire, just locate the endpoints (easy), push aside any wires in the way (usually not necessary, since the wires are mostly routed in bundles away from pins), and pull wire off with fine-point pliers or tweezers while holding an iron on the joint.

The wiring technique involves having several inches of bare kynar wire at the end, loosely routing the intended wire to get the required length of insulation, using a slot wire-stripper to separate that length of insulation, then sliding it along the bared wire till near the end. To make the first joint onto a pin on the board, use fine tip pliers to make a small loop on the wire end, slip over pin, press tight, then solder. Then slide the insulation down till it's tight against the joint.
Route the wire across the board, avoiding burying pins and bearing signal cross talk, etc in mind. Place wire against end-point pin, use fine pliers to loop the bare wire tightly once around the pin. Solder. Cut off excess wire.

That the wires were looped on the terminus pins, meant it was easy to attach/detach multiple wires to single points, if necessary. Since the existing wires didn't pop off if the solder was remelted.
Also, since kynar doesn't melt at soldering temperatures, if you did happen to accidentally touch the iron tip to the wiring in-place, no harm done.

The result is very robust, and I NEVER had a single fault due to wires coming off, or bad joints.
Sometimes if I was going to be frequently handling a prototype made this way, I'd attach a protective panel of clear plastic sheet over the wiring. But usually not.

Incidentally, the board with the copper foil under the point to point wiring, was a complex analog system with a mix of analog and digital signals, up to around 20MHz. It worked perfectly. That cut-and-hack method of circuit prototyping is the best I know of.

reminds me of the old wire-wrap days.  those were not good days, btw

Yes, wire wrap was horriffic. Bulky, fragile, crap for high frequency signal quality.
This soldered point to point system was a reaction to my disgust with wire-wrap, and is _much_ more practical, reliable, easy to work on. Plus the signal quality is as good as the grounding system you choose.
Oh, incidentally, the 'pins' are the legs of IC sockets. If I knew I'd be working on a dev board for a long time I'd use machine pin sockets. But mostly just the cheaper standard sockets.

In those years (80s, 90s) I'd never do a PCB unless I already had fully prototyped the circuit, and usually even got most of any required software going. The result was that even for complex designs I could usually do PCbs that worked first time.

[linux-works]

I don't have an issue with perf-boarding.  I do almost nothing but that.

just the single color that drives me nuts, that's all   you have to admit that colors help you trace out things when you get to that point.  my vision is bad enough as it is, I need the color diffs to help pick one wire out from the rest.  I simply would not be able to do any work with a monocolor wiring job like that.  I'd give up with frustration, to be honest.