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Magnet wire?And coil wire length

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Doritofingers

Sun May 02 2010, 11:40PM

Registered Member #2829 Joined: Mon Apr 26 2010, 03:52PM
Location: US
Posts: 4

Has anyone used magnet wire from parawire.com? Is it any good? The reason I ask is that a 1Lb spool of 30AWG of wire is $17.50 and the prices for magnet wire at the major distributors I checked(Mouser and Allied) are ~$45-50 for 1/2Lb. spool of 30AWG !!!

Also for a 4.5"x10" coil using 30AWG wire what would the wire length be? I tried to figure it out myself but I'm not sure if my math is correct.
I figured it by dividing the winding length (10") by the wire thickness (.010") and then multiplying the product by the coils circumference(14.13") that gave me a wire length of 14,130" or 1,177.5' is this the correct way to find wire length? If not what is the proper equation or is there some sort of calculator I could use?I did a web search and only found info on finding inductance of a coil of certain dimensions or the inverse.Nothing pertaining to wire length.

Thanks

Herr Zapp

Mon May 03 2010, 12:05AM

Registered Member #480 Joined: Thu Jul 06 2006, 07:08PM
Location: North America
Posts: 644

Df -

Note that if you try to place an order with Parawire for their magnet wire, you are linked to their "Craft Wire" store. Also, their primary focus is on craft and bead shows, so I'd ask first if this is prime grade magnet wire, or 2nd quality magnet wire rejected for insulation flaws, etc. Given all the labor involved in winding a high-quality secondary, I wouldn't skimp on one of the most critical components.

Are you planning on building a conventional unipolar Tesla coil? If so, a 4.5" X 10" secondary is not a very good design, for a number of reasons. A typical length:diameter ratio for a secondary coil is 4:1 or 5:1, so if you have a 4.5" diameter coilform, a reasonable winding length would be around 20-23".

Most of the Tesla coil design programs (Wintesla, JAVATC, etc.) will calculate the required length of wire for a secondary of given dimensions, as well as calculating all the other critical electrical parameters you need to know to design a working Tesla coil.

Regards,
Herr Zapp

Crunchy Frog

Mon May 03 2010, 05:28PM

Registered Member #2422 Joined: Tue Oct 06 2009, 02:41AM
Location:
Posts: 85

I would look on ebay for wire. You can get real magnet wire quite inexpensively.

Doritofingers

Mon May 03 2010, 09:53PM

Registered Member #2829 Joined: Mon Apr 26 2010, 03:52PM
Location: US
Posts: 4

@Herr Zapp: Thanks for the reply, I plan on building a copy of Steve Ward's Mini SSTC and he uses a 4.5" x 10" secondary.
I did a search for "Wintesla" and all I found was references to another program called Wintesla that is for programing cell phones.Anyway
I found another program called "Tesla Coil CAD" that was able to determine the wire length which was the same as what I figured.

@ Chrunchy Frog: Thanks for the tip!

Thanks again!

Herr Zapp

Mon May 03 2010, 11:19PM

Registered Member #480 Joined: Thu Jul 06 2006, 07:08PM
Location: North America
Posts: 644

Df -

Wintesla (v5.x) is a simple but useful TC design program that can be downloaded from here:

A more sophisticated program, JAVATC (v10.0) can be downloaded from here:

Regards,
Herr Zapp

Captoro

Mon Jun 28 2010, 10:00PM

Registered Member #2946 Joined: Mon Jun 28 2010, 09:34PM
Location:
Posts: 6

Hi, I cannot download Wintesla, there is an error on the web site of M. copper. it would be very appreciated if someone can send it to me by email, thank you so much . **link**

Goodchild

Mon Jun 28 2010, 10:34PM

Registered Member #2292 Joined: Fri Aug 14 2009, 05:33PM
Location: The Wild West AKA Arizona
Posts: 795

This is were I buy all of my wire:

I have built many coils with wire from that site, all work very well, very high quality wire.

And it's only $25 for a 1lb spool of 30 AWG

quicksilver

Tue Jun 29 2010, 01:12AM

Registered Member #1408 Joined: Fri Mar 21 2008, 03:49PM
Location: Oracle, AZ
Posts: 679

Herr Zapp is very well informed.
My wife has had a moderate jewelry business for quite some years. In that, she has had use for wire that temped me to buy some for my own needs.
In fact there are lower grades (actually, they are lower than "factory 2nd's), they are rejected form the electronics industry and often sold as scrap. Unfortunately, the larger production wire drawing firms do not do much more than isolate the flawed material and that is often sold in a variety of sourced arenas.
Buyer beware: if it's too good a deal to be true it's not a good deal.
Generally speaking, retail level cost for 1/4lb of quality "magnet" wire is approx 6-8 USD ($). Cost drops slightly at 1lb but substantial cost drops at a 20lb spool.

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