Crossover chokes: is there a reason they are small and thick

[tom1356]

instead of wide and flat?
Using the calculator it would appear you could save quite a bit of wire if you made them flat and wide.
I'm looking at making them from silver wire and it could represent significant savings.
Thanks
Tom

[Jonathan Bright]

Look, I'm not an expert on coils/inductors but there is an optimum configuration for the sort of aircored units that most audiophiles use and to use popular language the "doughnut" shape is roughly it. I suggest that you try 'googling' inductors and look up the formula. It will give dimensions in terms of inside and outside diameter and 'width' etc. Thiele wrote a good paper in the JAES which had some nice short cuts and practical tips but it still looks like a doughnut! My comments apply to wire. There are some exotic foil designs around. They may be different.

When I say "optimum" I mean from the point of view of getting the most inductance for you length of copper.

[GRollins]

Inductors rely on the windings being in close proximity to each other. It's how they work. As a rule of thumb, the cross section of an inductor coil should be nearly square for efficiency.
I'm not clear how you feel that you will save wire by configuring the coil in some other way. If it were that simple to make them cheaper, then people would have done so long ago.
Silver is fine, but count on using the same number of turns, in the same configuration as the usual inductors. Silver being a better conductor than copper, the resistance will be lower, and the inductor will be a better part because of it. It will also cost more, of course.
Note that silver has been used for coils in radios and such, back in the old days. No, there's no point in tearing up old ham rigs--the inductances were too small to be of much use in a speaker.

Grey