Telecom wire, is this any good for lights?

[csshih]

Hi All, I need a bit of help from the wire experts here
don't know where else to post this thread, but electronics seemed like a good idea.

I recently got my hands on some old telecom(hey, the old stuff is quality stuff) wire that was being taken out (some outdoor rated stuff), and I was wondering if it were any good?

It is solid copper core, and roughly measured, appears to be 22 AWG.
I am measuring roughly 0.037" outside dia (insulation included)

to try to figure out what kind of insulation, i tried heating up the wire with an iron.. only when i actually touched the wire did it shrink. keeping the 25W iron on the copper didn't shrink anything.

also, I am currently running some current though the wire to see if it heats up, so far 1.7A seems to be fine (hobby charger)

ah, and did I mention that the insulation was a pain to strip off?

here's a pic:

thank you in advance for any help.

 

[jasonck08]

I'm no "expert" but solid copper core wire should offer very low resistance. The downside is it's not nearly as flexible and hard to work with in a small flashlight environment, that's why I prefer wire wrapped in silicon, because its very flexible.

If its 22 AWG solid copper it should be good up to about 9-10A.

 

[Mr Happy]

Well, wire is wire

If it's copper it's good.

That kind of wire is generally better for long point-to-point runs than for internal hook ups. Thick solid core wire can be a bit hard to work with in small spaces due to the lack of flexibility.

Really there is nothing more to tell you than you can discover for yourself by holding it in your hands and weighing it up for possible uses.

 

[csshih]

thank you for responding!

if either of you are interested in some, I'll stuff a bubble mailer gratis

 

[Mr Happy]

Thanks for the offer, but I have as much of that kind of wire as I need :thumbsup:

 

[Justin Case]

I have some of that type of wire. If that's all I had, of course I'd use it. But if I had access to Teflon-jacketed, stranded wire, I'd definitely use it instead.

The telecom wire probably uses PVC insulation, which isn't as tough as Teflon. And as you've seen, the PVC shrinks back. I definitely would not want to use PVC-jacketed wire in a high temp, incandescent application. Also, the solid copper wire fatigues easier than stranded and in tight installs/re-installs, just a few bends can severely weaken (or break) the wire. The telecom wire I have is standard home telephone wire with four 24 AWG, jacketed (red, yellow, green, black) conductors inside a common jacket.

 

[jhellwig]

That wire would be good for jumpers on bread boards or repairing broken circuit boards.

Putting 9-10 amps through it would only accomplish removing the insulation. 1 or 2 amps should be fine. Not much more.

 

[Justin Case]

22 AWG is too small regardless of jacket material for 9A-10A.

 

[kramer5150]

I know a lot of audio-geek guys who use telecom CAT-5 wires for DIY audio interconnect. They claim the telco rated copper is the highest purity and offers the lowest resistance per cross sectional area.

I have no idea how much of this is BS though, and if it even applies to DC electronics... being that audio transmission is AC.

I can't think of any flashlight DIY thats so sensitive, that the purity/grade of copper wire used will make or break the design.

I know there are other DIY'ers here who go through painstaking efforts to keep wires as short as possible. So hopefully some of those members can educate us....:thumbsup:

 

[ShineOnYouCrazyDiamond]

the solid copper wire fatigues easier than stranded and in tight installs/re-installs, just a few bends can severely weaken (or break) the wire.

+1000 on that statement. Telecom wire is actually very cheap wire when you get the solid core stuff. It's usually used for d-marc to d-marc patching which is one-time use only. If you have to break a patch you just throw it out and pull a new clean punch-down.

I would never want to risk that lack of flexibility in something like a flashight

I know a lot of audio-geek guys who use telecom CAT-5 wires for DIY audio interconnect. They claim the telco rated copper is the highest purity and offers the lowest resistance per cross sectional area.

I have no idea how much of this is BS though, and if it even applies to DC electronics... being that audio transmission is AC.

I can't think of any flashlight DIY thats so sensitive, that the purity/grade of copper wire used will make or break the design.

I would say CAT5 cable UTP would be ok but limited these sort of runs.

The actual statement about the low resistance cross area is BS to a certain extent, IMO. CAT5 cable is able to transmit data very fast an reliably because of the UTP nature of the run. The twisting of the cable upon itself hels remove interference, but the runs are limited to 100 meters because of the attenuation of the signal in the 22/24AWG wire. Also any untwisted sections of the wire will add to interference. An end-to-end run should not have more than 4 inches of untwisted section total or else max bandwidth could drop.

For an audio run I would prefer a higher quality shielded cable with a quality di-electric between the conductors - this type of run for a low level pre-amp signal is less likely to pic up hum for external sources - where the UTP CAT5 cable might. I think Monster makes a quality cable with a lot of copycats out there.

For the flashlight use I think it could be a good purpose cable for this use becuase of the extreme flexibility, especially in small places w/o having to worry about crimping it too tightly.

 

[ptolemy]

Hmm

depends how much of it you have.

maybe clean it up, smelt it and use it for copper heatsinks?

 

[csshih]

depends how much of it you have.

like... 10 lbs of it.. :devil:

some plastic ribbon in there, too.

 

[ShineOnYouCrazyDiamond]

like... 10 lbs of it..

At least if it snaps you have more.......

 

[jrmcferren]

If nothing else it is great for coding the wires in a circuit. In each 25 pair bundle you have 50 different codes (25 pair times 2 wires per pair).