Originally posted by Ferric Toes
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It is good to see you active on this forum again.
Back in 2006 when I wrote this article http://www.geotech1.com/pages/metdet...s/FastCoil.pdf , I tried making a coil with Kynar wire just to compare it to PVC and Teflon insulation. Kynar had a higher dielectric constant (DC) and thus made a coil with a lower self resonant frequency than Teflon but it also had a very thin layer of insulation compared to the others I tried. PVC has a DC that can range from about 4 to over 6. Just using a different insulation, the same coil size went from about 700KHz using PVC to 1.25MHz (indicating less coil capacitance) using Teflon insulation.
When I tried using basket weave techniques to reduce coil capacitance, I lost all benefits because the shielding of this larger wire bundle tended to increase the coil-to-shield capacitance. Stranded Teflon insulated wire seems to be the most practical way to make a coil using the thinnest wire bundle consistent with obtaining the desired TX pulse coil time constant.
Another interesting thing I discovered is that the full coil-to-shield capacitance is not imposed on the coil's self resonance. Only about 20% of the coil-to-shield capacitance causes the coil's self resonance to be lower.
Eric, do you find that Litz wire will only show its value in the very low delays of around 5 to 6 microseconds? For getting delays down to about 8 to 10 microseconds, thin strands of tin plated AWG32 seems to work good enough? The tin plating appears to provide enough resistance between strands to help break up detectable eddy currents from being generated in the coil wire itself. The Minelab coil experts also seem to recommend AWG32 as being the optimum wire strand size. However, some aftermarket Minelab coils use Litz wire. Do you have any ideas why?
I have enjoyed learning about PI metal detectors and coils mostly from your early PI classroom forum.
Thanks
bbsailor
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