I've not seen a nickel barrier used when copper is plated or clad over steel. Can you show an example of this?
se
barrier
No need to have a diffusion barier unless the final surface is gold.
Standard practice for mil spec plating gold over any diffusable undercoating. Steel just needs a copper-nickel-whatever coating for corrosion resistance... minimizes pores and or electrolysis
doesn't seem to be much comprehension demonstrated by some of the cheerleaders here
John L.
No need to have a diffusion barier unless the final surface is gold.
Standard practice for mil spec plating gold over any diffusable undercoating. Steel just needs a copper-nickel-whatever coating for corrosion resistance... minimizes pores and or electrolysis
doesn't seem to be much comprehension demonstrated by some of the cheerleaders here
John L.
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In one of my previous lives at the Motorola plant, I maintained the equipment in the thin film microelectronics manufacturing factory. Nickel was used on just about any module whether it got gold or not. Maybe it was just easier to use a standard product flow up until the last few steps. Maybe this is the case with expensive resistors too.
That stuff has been gone for at least 15 years now. Got to play with some cool equipment while it was there though. One of the process guys even figured out how to make gold plated razor blades for the coke heads to wear on a gold chain around their necks. It wasn't easy to keep the gold on considering the acidic substance it would be expoxed to. It involved micro abrasion, some time in the plasma etcher, and the sputtering machine before plating.
Who says the resistors are expensive?
And show me any leaded resistor with nickel over copper lead wires that aren't gold plated.
se
Nope. Guess they can't bear the thought that the leads are most likely just copper over steel with an overall tin plate as is common.
se
I checked identical parts. The copper is covered with a silver substance that does not seem to easily tarnish. I physically scraped the lead ends until I got copper. One could do this with a razor blade or a sharp tool. The magnetic attraction is moderate with even a very strong magnet, and only from the leads.
I agree with John regarding actually testing the material, and suspect that SY is ahead of the game given his training, occupation and access to the appropriate equpment.
It would be unwise, this far in, to allow conjecture to rule over emperical evidence - surely the reason we are here in the first place...
It would be unwise, this far in, to allow conjecture to rule over emperical evidence - surely the reason we are here in the first place...
Solid nickel, yes. But not nickel over copper, except perhaps for gold plated leads which these obviously are not.
And again, Bybee claims the leads are copper, not nickel.
se
We haven't even passed through the leads, can't imagine what would happen when we reach the "nucleus".
They're not.
The leads are absolutely not plated copper nor copper alloy- no amount of scraping causes copper to appear. And the attraction to magnets is fierce- when I held a loudspeaker a few inches over the workbench, the parts literally flew off the table.
There's pretty simple test for nickel that I'll run- basically, it's digested in nitric acid, potassium hydroxide added to bring the pH to something over 9, then adding DMG (a chelating agent). A red color indicates nickel- white precipitate in the alkali step indicates iron. The leads do solder well, so I think jlsem's speculation is most likely correct.
Whichever, the physical specs given by the manufacturer and vendors (size, materials) are false. And audiophiles who believe that ferromagnetic leads are the antichrist should beware.
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