Why is copper wire “stripped” with inductors/toroids…?
Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at
7:03 am
I guess I am a little confused; for example, the pictures below:
http://www.regionalmfg.com/components/toroid-inductor-8.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electronic_component_inductors.jpg
These are typical inductors/toroids… and there are many like them. Copper itself is a conductive material, so why is copper wire stripped before soldering it to a circuit? I dunno if I am totally missing something here…
Tagged with: conductive material • copper wire • electronic component • inductors • missing something • wikipedia
Filed under: Electronic Circuit Components
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These wires have a hard varnish coating that are the insulation to prevent them from shorting with each other, this coating is resistant to solder and need to be removed before soldering, cleaning the wire also make the solder joint more stable and clean.
Without the insulation, it conducts less heat.
The insulating enamel has to be stripped from the copper wire to enable soldering. This can be done chemically or by scraping.
The process is called "dressing the leads."
The copper only looks like bare copper wire, but that is just because the insulation is clear, transparent and quite thin. It can be other colours and older enamels were often black or brown. This insulation is more like paint. I have seen pale red, green and blue of different shades. Modern insulation on so called magnet wire is usually polyurethane.