IRON vs STEEL

[mcorrade]

I see people talk about iron wire used for there coil cores. I can't seem to find "iron" anywhere......Everything is made if steel these days. Any ideas on what is made of iron or where I can find some would be greatly appreciated.....
-mike

[z.monkey]

Wire is copper, the cores are iron and steel.  Iron has better permeability than steel.  Permeability is the ability of the core material to conduct magnetic flux.  As for the wire usually solid conductor wire is used to wind electromagnets.  Magnet wire has a thin varnish for insulation.  However, you can use other wire to wind a coil,  magnet wire is going to give you the best magnetic flux density.

If you referring to small iron rods in the core you can use concrete reinforcing wire which should be soft iron, sometimes called pig iron.

Hope this helps...

[mcorrade]

thanks z.monkey i was talking about the core and people using iron wire cutting it to length and then varnishing them and putting them together to form a iron core for the coil.

As far as concrete ties there all just about steel these days.

-mike 

[z.monkey]

Iron is the best magnetic material that you can use for a magnetic core.  I am building a solid state generator which has iron cores.  What I have used is "black" iron plumbing pipes.  These are available at Home Depot or Ace Hardware.  Or you can go to a plumbing supply.  There are a lot of common nails that are pig iron.  There has to be a metal supply in your town.  Machine shops that work on engine parts will have a supply of iron filings that are just scrap, they will give them to you.  Rebar is recycled pig iron.  If you question whether something is pig iron, let it sit in water, then throw it out in the yard, if it rusts then it is pig iron. 

[z.monkey]

Howdy,
This link is to a wikipedia article about core permeability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeability_%28electromagnetism%29#Relative_permeability
With the chart in the article you can see that iron is superior to steel for a magnetic core.  Mu Metal and Permalloy look like they are better, but I don't where to get them.

Blessed Be...