silver coated military grade for speaker wire

[jleaman]

I use this stuff..

http://cgi.ebay.com/50-ft-20-AWG-Si...6119174QQihZ019QQcategoryZ32833QQcmdZViewItem

And this guy rocks.. !!!

 

[mrshow4u]

Yup, Silver+Teflon is awesome. Looks good, solders well, no melting insulation. Only thing it requires is more cash and good strippers.

 

[patch]

carbon on silver surface

auplater is right in stating that a lot of carbon is found on silver plated wire. The carbon atoms are found on the *surface* of the silver, and are thought to get there via use of organic lubricants in the wire-making process. I have read that carbon atoms can make up roughly 40 percent of the surface of a finished silver plated wire. Highly controlled manufacturing had it down to about 15 percent.

I have not read anything on the amount of atomic carbon on the surface of bare copper wire, but assume its there at least equally, given the overall tighter process controls on silver plating.

 

[patch]

link to silver plate evaluation

FYI, here is a link to an older tech report on silver plating issues in aerospace cables. This is a referenced ESA report on research done in 1983. It updated research done in the 1960s. Not many source documents like it out there.

Link to ESA site.

That server is slow. If the link doesn't work, go to www.escies.org and look under technologies\materials and processes.

 

[poobah]

Great article dude!

Finally... confirmation as why wires are plated with silver in the first place.

 

[auplater]

Re: carbon on silver surface

auplater is right in stating that a lot of carbon is found on silver plated wire. The carbon atoms are found on the *surface* of the silver, and are thought to get there via use of organic lubricants in the wire-making process. I have read that carbon atoms can make up roughly 40 percent of the surface of a finished silver plated wire. Highly controlled manufacturing had it down to about 15 percent.

I have not read anything on the amount of atomic carbon on the surface of bare copper wire, but assume its there at least equally, given the overall tighter process controls on silver plating.

Actually, while surface contamination of the wire with carbon containing lubricants is a problem, the carbon I was talking about is actually co-deposited with the silver, due to grain refiners, briteners, surfactants and other electrochemically active stuff in the plating bath, as well as breakdown polymers of the cyanide anion in the solution.

Many analytical techniques are incapable of resolving carbon contamination in metals, due to back streaming of pump oils in vacuum apparatus, the low atomic weight of carbon, etc. hence it is often excluded in purity specs.

So when you see plating specs of 99.99% purity, they often exclude non-metals for these reasons.

FYI

 

[patch]

good point on silver composition

auplater has information on silver purity in plating that is truly interesting and new to me. I would like to read lab assay results on this, and find ways to prevent impurities. Thanks greatly for any help on this.

I noted in the ESA article that I posted - their rules stated that the finished silver plating must have no porosity (dullness usually), not sure exactly what that means about the processing.

FWIW, when doing small time plating, we use investment-grade silver rounds for anodes and get a dull white finish (when we get the variables under reasonable control and the anodes don't polarize on us <grin>). Ours take a light cotton wheel buff to bring up a shine.

Also for FWIW, I have read that wire makers heavily plate larger (e.g.) 16ga solid copper wires using electrolytic/cyanide processing to 99.99 or 99.999 percent silver purity. The wire is then drawn down to the smaller gage (34, 30, 27, etc) strands and the resulting 1 micron or more silver coating.