Wire Wire Wire

[N0WEK]

In looking for some high voltage wire (I thought I still had some neon sign wire around) I found this company...

http://brillman.com/store/paper-catalog

All kinds of high voltage wire including several colors of cotton covered.

All kinds of primary wire, many cloth covered as well, I haven't inquired what the voltage rating is on this stuff but it should at least be good for filaments and such.

The wire section starts about page 15.

They seem to be well recommended by the car folks.

[KM1H]

My kind of place and Ive bought lots of vintage auto wire, connectors, etc from them. I use their battery connectors even on new vehicles.

Carl

[flintstone mop]

Spark Plug wire is good and Neon Sign wire is for HV.
You can cheat and use RG 213 center conductor for up to 5kv.....not sure.

fred

[KM1H]

Its been used industrially at 10KV.

Hi pot some and be surprised.....at least the good brands.

[WA1GFZ]

packard 440 ignition wire
Belben used to sell it in auto parts stores

[The Slab Bacon]

packard 440 ignition wire
Belben used to sell it in auto parts stores

Good luck finding it locally any more! You might find it at a lawnmower repair shop.
the only thing that uses it is small engines. You'll prolly have to search the web for it.

[WA1GFZ]

Napa used to sell it in 25 foot rolls

[KA3EKH]

Harris uses RG-213 to connect the external power supply to the transmitter on the HT-20. The one I have runs 8.0 kV @2.5 amps for about twenty feet thru a steel conduit. Inside the transmitter and the power supply the jacket and shield is separated back about three inches on each end with the center attached to a ceramic binding post and the shield of the coax grounded.  The screen runs over RG-58 terminated the same way. Apparently coax has good HV insulation. On the old Comark analog television transmitter I use to operate it used red HV cable that did not look any different from other Red HV cable I have seen and that was run just laying in one inch thick wall conduit from the beam transformers that were located outside the building to the IOT cabinets in the transmitter and carried 30 kV at up to 2.0 amps. The control cables for the HV contactors also ran in the same conduit right next to the HV line. Modern wire insulation must be a wonderful thing.

[ke7trp]

I purchased some very nice red high voltage wire with the soft plyable jacket from w0vmc. 

Some types of RG58 has a high rating.  I think 5kv.  The standard cable has 1500 to 2000.  I used some in the king. 

Another source is to call Ted Henry or find him on ebay. He sells HV cable and millen connectors. I used them in the King 500.

C

[k4kyv]

While we're on the subject of wire, I acquired a roll of zirconium copper wire a few years ago.  Maybe at a hamfest; don't remember purchasing it but I  have had it here for a long time.  It is about #22 gauge and bare.  I have found it extremely useful for lashing things together.  It doesn't easily break when you twist it; it's extremely strong for its size and it readily takes solder.  One thing I regularly use it for is to hold a large conductor against a lug so that I can solder it.  I simply wrap the ZC wire tightly around both the conductor and lug until the conductor is firmly fixed in place, then crimp it with pliers, and finally apply solder.  Makes a neat, professional looking connection that can be unsoldered easily without burning up everything in the vicinity.

Here are some characteristics.  Don't know how expensive, hard-to-find or how toxic it may be, but I have a lifetime supply on hand. Looks like the "spring temper" version would be a good candidate for making homebrew coil clips and maybe even for Apache tuning control pulleys if it could be purchased in wide, flat stock. Apparently that would require a special order from this company (probably way too expensive):

http://www.fiskalloy.com/copper-wire/zirconcop.html

[The Slab Bacon]

Napa used to sell it in 25 foot rolls

"Used to" are the key words here..............


Just FWIW, if anyone out there needs some get-down serious HV wire send me a P/M to discuss it. It is #14 or 16 stranded center conductor with some type of rubbery stuff for the insulator (may be teflon) and a braided fiberglass or something similar wrapped around it. It is a good 1/2" in diameter over all, and IIRC rated something astromomical like 50kV or more. I believe it came off of an X-ray machine. I havent seen it in years, but I believe it is still in the basement somewhere. I have around 50' of it. For those of you that want to run some get-down serious plate supplies. I was gonna recycle it for the copper, but it would have been too much like work to strip it all.

[k4kyv]

It would be a shame to recycle that wire for the copper.  Kinda like crushing a half-dozen good 833As or 4X1s to recycle the glass and the metal inside.

But if you did decide to recycle it, you wouldn't need to strip it.  Just build a fire in the back yard and throw in the roll. Once the  rubbery stuff burns away, the fibreglass would slip right off.

$20 bills run through the shredder would make good packing material, too.

PS: tell me exactly what gauge the conductor is, and I'll swap-even a roll of bare copper wire the same size, and pay shipping charges to boot.  

[The Slab Bacon]

It would be a shame to recycle that wire for the copper.  Kinda like crushing a half-dozen good 833As or 4X1s to recycle the glass and the metal inside.

Don,
     that is really the main reason that It is still in my basement. I figgered that someone someday (like maybe myself) would have a use for it. That szht HAD to be expensive when new. It deserves a better fate than that.

But I figgered it would get someone's attention.  

I'll look and see If I can find it tonight.

[KC2ZFA]

the Packard 440 wire is on page 20 of the catalog (lower right).

[Ed/KB1HYS]

This will probably freak someone out, but I've made my own HV wire. I used some 14 or 16 gage stranded and inserted it into some airline tubing. ( I think it's used by fish tanks?) it's clear, flexible and has walls that are very thick. I filled each end with a little RTV and a wire tie.

I originally used this on Tesla Coil circuits which can (and did) see many 10's or 100's of thousands of volts never had a failure.   I also used it in my homebrew amp that runs ~ 2500 volts or so and no problems. 

[The Slab Bacon]

the Packard 440 wire is on page 20 of the catalog (lower right).

Who's catalog? ? ? ? ? ? ?

[KC2ZFA]

the Packard 440 wire is on page 20 of the catalog (lower right).

Who's catalog? ? ? ? ? ? ?

the link in the first post is to a catalog. Go to the bottom of the page when it loads and at the right you'll see a page field...put in 20 and hit go !

[aafradio]

This will probably freak someone out, but I've made my own HV wire. I used some 14 or 16 gage stranded and inserted it into some air line tubing.

This approach has worked great for me as well.  I got the idea from some postwar countermeasures gear from Collins and some other manufacturers, where vinyl tubing was slipped over normal 600v wire to handle 3kV CRT elements.  The wire was then laced into a normal 600v wire bundle to run from power supply to CRT, so it appears to have had some engineering analysis before manufacture.