Can I use silver plated krynar for my RX?

[punagold]

I read somewhere, but I can't find it now, that someone really liked silver plated wire. Then some one else mentioned never to use silver plated wire? I don't think my litz is working for me, I'm looking for an awg 28 krynar single strand and came across silver plated. Should I get it? Thanks

[sinclairuser]

i wound a coil for the barracuda out off kaynar wire as a test, i wondered if the plastic insulation would reduce inter wound capacitance(as opposed to magnet wire), it worked well for me but the problem was the size of spool available and the cost of the spools.
the kaynar i had was a 200m spool i had left from when i used to fit coolrunners to xbox 360s, so it was going spare, but when i bought it it was expensive since it normaly comes in 10m of 20m spools.
the coil i wound was 447uh and 1.8 ohms at 8" it did work ok, but not any benefit over other wire i tried, i have wondered if kaynar would wind good basket coils.

[Silver Dollar]

Litz not working? That's a bit weird as it works best for me. The silver is too conductive.

The idea is to make a coil that cannot see itself so take a working MD and wave it over
a 4" piece of the wire you want to use. The less it sees it the better!

A thick wire will be seen to well I tried coax with solid inner core and it worked poorly.

The idea with litz is small diameter conductors not electrically touching each other.

Tinned multiconductor can work OK too!

[baum7154]

I read somewhere, but I can't find it now, that someone really liked silver plated wire. Then some one else mentioned never to use silver plated wire? I don't think my litz is working for me, I'm looking for an awg 28 krynar single strand and came across silver plated. Should I get it? Thanks

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Take a look at the CHANCE PI Coil thread. I use 24 AWG 600 volt PTFE (Teflon) insulated stranded silver plated wire for most of my fast spider wound self-shielding coils and they operate at 8us of sample delay with no problem. One word of caution: silver plated wire comes in two varieties, one with a thin silver plate and one with a heavy silver cladding that bonds the strands of wire together. Do not use the heavy silver clad version! Less silver is what you want. By the way even though the thread is titled 'Chance PI Coil' the monocoils detailed there are applicable to all mono coil detectors. I have also wound a coil with 26 AWG 600 volt PTFE stranded silver plated wire and the smaller the wire size the less chance of it being detected and the faster the coil is due to lower interwinding capacitance, but always use the stranded wire not the solid silver plated wire. The dielectric constant of Kynar wire is not near as good as the PTFE/Teflon insulation and thicker insulation is better here, hence the 600 volt insulation. I performed the test outlined by Silver Dollar with a piece of the 24 AWG scrap silver plated and it is not detected.

Regards,

Dan

Regards

[6666]

I bought a roll of solid single 30gauge Kynar wire, but when it arrived it was silver coated, so I never used it based on comments that silver plated wire was no good as the silver shows as a target.
Maybe I will try it now, thanks.

[sinclairuser]

I bought a roll of solid single 30gauge Kynar wire, but when it arrived it was silver coated, so I never used it based on comments that silver plated wire was no good as the silver shows as a target.
Maybe I will try it now, thanks.

hi 6666, try it mate, cut a 3" section off of all the different types of wire you have wound coils with, and test them with your detectors.
you will find that kaynar is not detected any more or less readily than wire we use all the time, i have heard of testing shield material for detectabillity, that makes perfect sense, but any decent detector will see the wire.
especially some of the wire that has been used to wind coils in some of these boards.
to add to that it seems garrett use silver plated wire.

[6666]

hi 6666, try it mate, cut a 3" section off of all the different types of wire

Will do thanks.

[baum7154]

I read somewhere, but I can't find it now, that someone really liked silver plated wire. Then some one else mentioned never to use silver plated wire? I don't think my litz is working for me, I'm looking for an awg 28 krynar single strand and came across silver plated. Should I get it? Thanks

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First of all is your detector a PI?

Secondly will you be looking for small gold ( under 1/2 gram gold)requiring short sampling delays?

If yes to both questions then I would recommend you use 24 or 26 AWG 600 volt PTFE aka Teflon insulated stranded wire and thin silver plated is OK.

The difference is that Kynar has a dielectric constant of 6 minimum and up to 12, and Teflon/PTFE has a dielectric constant of 2.1 ...and lower is the better choice. The low dielectric constant of the insulation in a coil wire makes a coil that will decay or settle faster and that allows you to see the short response targets like small gold.

Also smaller wire size makes for less interwinding capacitance so 26 AWG is better in that regard than 24 AWG because capacitance is what slows down the decay or settling of a coil.

The tradeoff between 24 AWG and 26 AWG wire is one of resistance and 26 AWG has more resistance than 24 AWG.

Neither Kynar or Teflon has any effect on the detectability of a target sample of wire. Detection of a wire sample is dependent on the development of eddy current in a given wire sample and solid wire is more prone to eddy current development than stranded wire and larger gauge wire is more prone to eddy current development than smaller gauge wire. That is why Litz wire is somewhat attractive. But I have not seen any Teflon insulated Litz wire.

I hope this helps,

Dan

[punagold]

Yes, this is for a PI. Mainly I'm looking for rings at the beach.

Another important point is that I am making a DD coil with separate RX and TX coils. I just smashed up my infinium coil and Garrett uses a 20 gauge 7 strand tinned for the TX and a single strand (tinned, but not sure if silver) for the RX. I am trying to copy this but much bigger in size. I cannot tell what the insulation is on the RX, single strand, but it is much smaller than the .01 on the TX coil. My guess is around .05, making me think it is Kynar.


Found a good explanation of insulation here:

http://www.thermometricscorp.com/wircabmat1.html

[punagold]

Sorry, mean to say .005 on the RX insulation.

[sinclairuser]

the number code on the garrett wire should tell you the exact rating and insulation profile, unless it is proprietary to garrett.

[punagold]

From what I can see there are no markings on the RX wire.

[punagold]

Well, I just got a good deal on a 28 awg tinned solid conductor in a semirigid pvc rated at 300V (UL 1061). It was half the price for the silver plated Kynar. I hope that it will work the same or better for the RX coil.