Square magnet wire for inductors?

[Raoul]

Can inductors be wound from square magnet wire?

 

[AndrewT]

Hi,
yes and also edge wound rectangular wire.
Q. How do you stop the square wire deforming into a trapezium like shape as you bend it around the former? The width at the outer radius will be less than the width at the inner radius.

 

[Coolin]

sure !

It might work better too.

But where to get this wire?

 

[Coolin]

Sure square will deform but so will round

 

[Magura]

But where to get this wire?

I all my magnet wire from synflex. Best quality, best customers support and fair pricing.


Magura

 

[Sch3mat1c]

Square, rectangular and flat wire are wonderful when you have to carry 50+ amperes in a limited core space. You building a linear computer power supply perhaps? Spot welder? Would love to see progress.

Tim

 

[Magura]

Well, for round wire the party ends around 2.8-3.0mm2 wire, then it simply turns too hard to deal with. Bigger than that is a rectangular wire or winding machine job.


Magura

 

[Raoul]

But where to get this wire?

I run into square magnet wire at surplus houses every now and then. I couldn't think of a reason why it shouldn't be used, but have never seen inductors/ coils turned from square wire. You would think that somewhere there would be an audio company touting the virtues and superior sound of their "square wire inductors". Guess the snake oil guys missed a spot...

Thanks for the replies, guys.

 

[sam9]

I first heard of square wire about 30 years ago when I worked fora company that was developing superconductiong electromagnets. Winding it required some special equipment to keep it from twisting as it was wound. The main reason for using it was to increase the surface to volume ratio.

 

[AndrewT]

Hi,
square and rectangular wire are used to maximise the copper area (reduce resistance) within a minimum magnetic gap width (maximise the gap flux). Both of these lead to an increase in efficiency and improves other attributes.

These advantages do not carry over directly to inductors although a small increase in Q will result. A better method of increasing Q is to adopt a square format for the windings using a core diameter of about 2.5 times the coil height and width ( but almost everyone recommends a long single layer coil which nescesarily has more resistance).

 

[Sch3mat1c]

Well, if you have a lot of current to handle, the square wire packs better and you can fit more turns for the same core, at lower resistance. Overall it does increase the Q, yes.

Tim