Rejoining a steel wire to another steel wire.

This afternoon I decided to once again tackle my steel wires by joining them up into a long single coil before I begin the rewind process. There is 7 x 50 meter length reels to join.

Using what materials I have here and knowing what to do after reading up about this I learned I need a very hot soldering iron, but I realised I needed something to hold the two steel wires together while I joined them, so I used very fine copper wire.

I brightened both ends by using steel wool, then overlapped each end against the other about 3/4 of an inch. Then I wound the fine copper wire around the length of the joint.
Grabbed the soldering iron and put it to full heat, she was hot hot hot, then fed solder onto the hot steel wire over and on top of the copper turns. The trick is to not allow the solder to flow onto the iron's hot tip, only directly onto the steel wire.
The solder flowed quite well, I was quite pleased with the results, then I filed any sharp bits down with a file until smooth, moved the heatshrink over the joint and shrunk it down, the whole join looks a bit big. I can live with it as this is a research coil, the answers it gives to questions will be invaluable, if it  works for a couple of weeks, this will give me time to experiment with it and learn from it.
If it fails then I can learn from it to, in fact I already have.

jim

3481 = The steel wires soldered
3482 = Heat shrinked, it's a bit bulky, carn't be helped though.

Jim:

Looks like a good joint to me.  Did you by chance check the resistance of the 2 wires joined before your joint that you made?  I am not saying it will make any difference....probably not but, this thought just occurred to me after reading your post.

You can braze the steel wire together but, this requires that you heat them to "cherry" red which will take more than a propane torch.  We used to mount our ultrasonic drills in this manner.  I used acetylene (no oxygen) for this to get the heat required.

I really admire your ability to keep going after a short.  I still have a Jeanna circuit in my bin that had a short somewhere and I have still not messed with it.  God only knows where the short is and I did/do not have the patience to find out.

Great work Mate.

Bill

Quote from: IotaYodi on October 25, 2010, 09:45:16 PM
The 1006 wire at McMasters looks acceptable. ......but the 1006 looks much better with its 99.5 to 99.75 % iron and .08% carbon compared to standard fence wire. The 1006 black oxide is $34.20 for 1660 ft. for 16 gauge. Personally I dont want to use zinc coatings and its more expensive anyway.

MW I assume the price quotes are for the fiberglass insulated copper wire. Is 500 ft the minimum run they want to do with both the copper and iron? Meanwhile can you get a price on the .048 1006 iron wire for insulation at 1660 ft. Maybe we can work something out here.

Interesting thought. Not familiar with the battery separators. Are they high dielectric and usable on a secondary?

OK, I'll order up .048" 1006 and get a quote to have fiberglass insulated.

Understand 1018 for core. Will provide dense field that shouldn't saturate like exotic materials (permolloy, mumetal)
Core should probably be bundled rod configuration for those wanting an upgrade. I see Bedini motors take this apporach.

I agree about not using galvanized anything.

500ft min for both copper and iron is correct.

Battery separators are excellent for use between primary winding layers. I will also use between primary and secondary (probably a lot thicker here). Like the fiberglass wire insulation, the synthetic separator paper will not turn to junk like cotton does over time. There are no dialectric issues. I think you would find it an excellent material for NS coils. I should warn people possibly interested in taking alkaline cells apart to look at this separator paper at this time. Electrolyte in there is 31% KOH (potassium hydroxide). This will eat skin and really damage eyes. The electrolyte can be neutralized with boric acid. I'll post pictures and specs when I recieve so people can get a feel for it without alkaline cell surgury. (safer this way).

MW thanks for the info!
That is correct on the drawing. My thinking was just iron on top of the copper wire. Plus doing the iron wire alone. It would be hard to do without a machine. A bass guitar string machine might be able to do it. A way to keep the coils tight together would be needed. Pvc insulation would work but possibly not with this coil. If its never been done it would be a first. I just dont know the physics behind it but perhaps someone can enlighten us. I guess a short length could be done by hand for experimentation.

Quote to cover 1660ft of supplied iron wire = $97.94.

I was goofing around in SolidWorks and made a few coil models. Here are a couple of pictures. My intent is to wind my coil so that irons and coppers all aligned from cross sectional standpoint. If you look at the gapping on end of the model, you will see what it will take to create alignment. BTW, I plan on individual layers, all wound in same direction. Connections would obviously have to be made on each end. Bedini made mention of this in one of his posts here a while back. There would be many games that could be played from wiring standpoint this way.

I will post a cross sectional view whenever Solidworks decides not to blow up when I create the drawing file. Furthermore, I will build intelligence into the models via MS-EXCEL link. I would be able to input key dimensional data on a coil and Solidworks would generate the models automatically. I'll follow up with complete assembly models and drawings. If I can get solidworks to report wire lengths, I'll get this incorporated.