Groundside Electrons

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Beau:

my exposure to wave functions and boundary conditions were in quantum mechanics. But the solutions themselves are not explicitly used in QM. They work in "classical" (Macro) events as well (2nd order partial differential equations in 2 or 3 dimensions if I remember). The functions themselves are the same, just the wave forms may not be, nor the solutions.

Box type speakers would be the type to use the "$1.20 trick", even "junk" speakers, or borrow a buddy's? This is a quick an dirty experiment that requires no special tools or technical prowess to do.

QM effects work in the "micro world" and translate to the "macro world", but are not as obvious as the underlying priciple because they seem to fly in the face of "common sense". the Manboni process, and the EnABL process are really just teryting to kill the dispersion effects at the edge of the loudspeaker cone or membrane. The same ideas can be applied to the speaker enclosure (I thought I saw a picture of a box speaker completely treated with the EnABL process). The "$1.20 trick" is a simplification of this and quick to demonstrate.

now the Electron pool is another story. I'm still scratching my head about this one.
 
Was going to try this out by twisting up strands of 30awg magnet wire I had on hand. I've used a lot of mag wire in my DIY projects and have a pretty good technique for removing the coating and tining the ends but this is just one strand at a time. When I twist 64 strands of this stuff and try to tin the ends it is anything but pretty.

What is the right way to tin the ends of Litz type wire? I'm gonna guess most of you doing this have solder pots (which I don't have).
Bigger iron? Flame? Flux? Do you fan the ends and do the strands more or less individually then re-twist?

Thanks,

Scott
 
scottw said:
Was going to try this out by twisting up strands of 30awg magnet wire I had on hand. I've used a lot of mag wire in my DIY projects and have a pretty good technique for removing the coating and tining the ends but this is just one strand at a time. When I twist 64 strands of this stuff and try to tin the ends it is anything but pretty.

What is the right way to tin the ends of Litz type wire? I'm gonna guess most of you doing this have solder pots (which I don't have).
Bigger iron? Flame? Flux? Do you fan the ends and do the strands more or less individually then re-twist?

Thanks,

Scott
I would try using the small handheld solder pots. Kill two birds with one stone. Do use the solder for pots as well.
 
a way to do this....

I haven't done this yet, but this is what I am planning on doing:

wind the magnet wire to some lenth, such that 1/2 the circumference equals the length you desire. Do not cut anything until you have the required number of turns. use crokus cloth or sandpaper and sand the varnish of the two free ends. Straighten the loops and use a thin width of chrokus cloth and pull it between the windings, exposing the copper. Tin the ends and the windings together. I'll make a sketch if that will help.

you could also just fold it back and forth to whatever length you need, and bare the ends and solder...
 
Scott,

What is the right way to tin the ends of Litz type wire? I'm gonna guess most of you doing this have solder pots

Yep, solder pots. Since this is #30 and is likely single poly nylon (SPN on the spool ) you can burn the insulation and then either lightly scuff with sand paper (800 grit or finer) or use a razor knife to scrape the carbon off. After scuffing, almost any solder iron will allow you to tin the ends, slowly

Otherwise a 150 watt or bigger solder iron, the big 3/4" or 1" jobs, will do the tinning without pre-abrasion activities. Just keep a constant reload of the solder bubble on one huge surface of the tip and go for it.

There are small solder pots available for pretty cheap prices and that will save time, fingers and blue air, from yelling ouch and other complementary words, as your finger tips melt onto the wire....

Or you can PM me for the price for a pair of ready to go Litz wire pieces and for a bigger price I will put them in the pretty cotton sleeves and you can stick em on your speaker cabinets ground terminals. Then you can legitimately claim voodoo magic to your friends.

These are the ones that will work, if any of them will, but the price for two pieces of wire, in cotton bags, is kinda steep. You can likely get a solder pot and a bar of good ole' 60/40, non RoHS stupidity, solder, for an equivalent amount and then all future worries are over... Looks like a Hexacon or Tenma pot will run you $90 or less for a tiny one suitable for tinning wire, so about twice what the ready made wires in cotton would cost when a bar of solder is included.

Bud
 
Originally posted by scottw What is the right way to tin the ends of Litz type wire? I'm gonna guess most of you doing this have solder pots (which I don't have).
Bigger iron? Flame? Flux? Do you fan the ends and do the strands more or less individually then re-twist?

I think I ended up with 24 strands of magnet wire in my loops, tinning the ends wasn't too hard even without a solder pot. After I finished twisting the wires together, I used a butane mini-torch to burn the enamel off the ends, after which I sanded off as much of the carbon residue as I could using 600 grit sandpaper. After that, a generous amount of flux on the wire and a big blob of solder on my soldering iron did the trick.
 
What happens if you get a large diameter single layer inductor, file gently along one side, strip your -ve cable by the same length, lay it across the filed area and solder it on? you have a whole series of round shorted loops in parallel.
I suppose you could put the whole thing in a cotton sock or whatever insulator you prefer.
 
Ok, this is my understanding of what was inside the photograph of one of the mcgafters...

Please confirm or explain again....

Mike, think you will have regrets when the insurance company refuses to cover your house if it burns down... "and this this sock does what mate?"
 

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Choky,

I do not know.

To talk to the physiks folks, each wire occludes all other wires beneath it, as far as coupling with the dielectric is concerned. This was a statement made about bare wire. Seems as though the insulated wire acts differently than was expected for bare wire. Certainly appears that those who have used magnet wire need less actual square inches of dielectric material around the multi strand cable.

Since there is not yet any rigorous analysis done on this effect, all is guess work. Except that folks who have really good ground planes, big solid sheets of copper, isolated from signal traces and dumped to power ground, have less success with these little loops.

I suspect that is why they are so useful out at speakers. I would try what you have and be ready to remove plastic dielectric like crazy.....

Bud
 
Nordic,

You are getting the idea. I might cut the loop, after removing insulation and before tinning and slide smaller diameter pieces of heat shrink tubing down the wire. I use three pieces, each one 15 mm long for a 150mm long piece of cable, made from 140 strands of #40 AWG insulated coil wire. Folks who use fewer strands seem to need more length of dielectric. Then solder it back up as a loop and attach to an appropriate place.

So for just a few strands of wire, and I have no idea how few, your complete enclosure of heat shrink may work very well.

The cotton sock is used to hide the reality of this foolishness, so that you can lie to the unsuspecting about this cool Quantum Mechanical Wizard Wire. If you tell them this and their eyes get big... well if it's your category of opposite sex you know what to do. If it's the other one, sell them some.

Bud
 
Ground chain modification....

Bud asked me to repeat here a little mod that I have used and that works well. The mod involves simply connecting ground points in a system. In a loud speaker that is being bi or tri wired you simply take a chunk of good weight wire and connect the negative terminals together. Have used ten gage monster wire as well as good old zip cord with both legs connected. This can be expanded upon by connecting the ground connections of the left and right speakers together. With mono block amplifires or dual mono stereo amps you simply run a length of wire between the two units signal output ground (negative) terminals. The effects are most always very noticable with an increase in detail and spacial information so it would seem that low level detail is improved. I should think that this is very similar to Bud's electron pool technique. Point is that this is very simple to try and undo if you so choose. Perhaps some of you can play with this and report your findings. Playing with types of dielectric and amount of dielectric might prove interesting as well. I have only ever played with what were usually old unused speaker wire and zip cord but was always pleased with the results. Regards Moray James.
 
Lot of info on ground planes and how currents travel in ground planes can be found at gigalabs.com and at the "printed circuit design and manufacture" site, amy be of intrest.
What also may be interesting (or not, depends how much your into PCB layout) is that on some designs it is worse for EMC having a seperate analogue and digital ground.
Another viewpoint is that as "conventional current plow" is basicly wrong, the ground plane is actualy the source, providing all those electrons for us to play with.
 
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