[TowerTalk] Fwd: Using aluminum wire [or aluminum clad wire]

[Hans Hammarquist]

 It is the square, hard pin that is the secret behind the good and reliable connection of wire wrapped connections. You will not even get a close result if you wrap a wire around a round pin. (Been there, done that, and that was tin plated Cu wire on tin plated Cu pins.) You have the same mechanism with wire nuts. Inside the nut is a spiral spring made of square wire. The sharp corners will press themselves into the softer metal in the conductor and form a "gas tight" connection.

I wonder if we can use wire nuts to make the connections to Al wires in antennas. Simple and cheap. Any comments?

Hans - N2JFS

 


 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Tod - ID <tod at k0to.us>
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Sent: Thu, Dec 30, 2010 11:40 am
Subject: [TowerTalk] Using  aluminum wire [or aluminum clad wire]




One does not need to solder wire to assure good conductivity between two

pieces that are 'connected' together. Western Electric ran experiments in

the 'middle ages' of technology that showed wrapped joints would actually

have better conductivity than soldered joints. The result was that the

telephone switching centers had wire wrapped connections rather than

soldered connections. The technique had cost and simplicity advantages as

well. Many of our initial commercial computers had wire-wrapped backplanes.

The Western Electric experiments used copper, not aluminum and the pins that

were wrapped with wire were square in cross section, not round.