teflon coated wire?

Is braided or solid teflon coated wire better for mods in a maglight? Also what is a good place to get the better wire?

I use silicone coated wire in my mods... ...works good.

The_bad_Frag said:

I use silicone coated wire in my mods... ...works good.

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Braided or Solid? And is the teflon coated not really necessary unless you're making a super powered super hot torch?

I use stranded Teflon on almost all my builds, high power or not.

-DF

I also use silicone high strand count wire. Its very flexible and heat resistant. Solders easy without melting the coating. It works great to solder to the led pcb boards where it has to bend at a 90 to go down into the pill or heatsink. Normal wire will melt when soldered bent at a 90 or it will try to bend out straight exposing the wire.
I usually purchase mine from epbuddy.com. They have 22AWG for .30 a foot. I usually order a few feet of different size to save on shipping. Most hobby shops have this type wire in stock. I have also ordered from hobbyking but it takes a couple of weeks to get in the mail. Epbuddy usually takes two days to the door. I will not build a mag light without it. Its just that much easier to work with. I can not speak on the Telfon coated wire. I have never used it. I would assume it has similar properties.

Silicone and Teflon jackets seem to have comparable temperature resistance when it comes to dealing with a hot soldering iron. The difference that I've noticed is in jacket toughness. Silicone is softer, more pliable, but more easily cut. Teflon is stiffer but more cut- and abrasion-resistant. If you need something like 12 ga noodle wire, no doubt it'll come with silicone insulation, not Teflon.

mbreckner said:

Braided or Solid? And is the teflon coated not really necessary unless you're making a super powered super hot torch?

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Its very fine braided. I made 2 pics next to an eneloop AAA. You can bend it 10.000.000 times and it still wont break. Even after 20-30 years silicone cable is still flexible as new. :wave:






It doesnt depend on the coating of the wire how much current it can handle. You need to choose the right thickness for the amps you need. I cant help you with that because your american awg-thingy is pretty weird...:thinking:

Do you really need braided wire, or just stranded?

Just stranded, thanks for all the good info guys!

Be mindful of your strand count on anything heavier gauged. I got some 22 awg(I think) for a SST-90 build and it was only 7 strands, and it was quite inflexible, to the point of being a pain to work with. usually its listed as N x M where N is the number of strands, and M is the awg of the strands.